Chicago Blackhawks Tickets

The Chicago Blackhawks are a professional ice hockey team based in Chicago, Illinois. They play in the National Hockey League (NHL). The team's name was spelled Black Hawks before the 1986 NHL season. The Chicago Black Hawks joined the NHL in 1926 as part of the league's successful foray into United States-based teams. Most of the Hawks' original players came from the Portland Rosebuds of the Western Hockey League, which had folded the previous season, and the players which were bought out by the Hawks' owner, Frederic McLaughlin. The name of the team refers to Chief Black Hawk, a prominent figure in the history of Illinois, and is one of many sports team names using Native Americans as icons. For many years the name was spelled primarily "Black Hawks", but sometimes "Blackhawks", even by the club itself. This minor ambiguity was finally settled in the summer of 1986 when the club officially decided on the one-word spelling. The Hawks' first season was a moderate success, with the forward line of Mickey MacKay, Babe Dye, and Dick Irvin each finishing near the top of the league's scoring race. The Hawks lost their 1927 first-round playoff series to the Boston Bruins. Following this series, McLaughlin fired head coach Pete Muldoon. According to Jim Coleman, a sportswriter for the Toronto Globe and Mail, Muldoon declared that because of McLaughlin's treachery, "The Black Hawks will never finish first!" At the time, finishing in first place was considered to be as much of an achievement as winning the Stanley Cup. The Curse of Muldoon was born, and became one of the first widely-known sports "curses." While the team would win three Stanley Cups, they would do so without having finished in first place either in a multi-division or a single-league format. In 1992 the Blackhawks, with Roenick scoring 53 goals, Chris Chelios (acquired from Montreal two years previously) on defense, and Belfour and future superstar Dominik Hasek splitting the goaltending duties, finally reached the final round. They were no match for Mario Lemieux and the Pittsburgh Penguins, losing in 4 straight games. Belfour posted a 40-win season in 1993 as the Hawks looked to go deep yet again, but the St. Louis Blues stunned Chicago with a first round sweep. After a near-.500 season in 1994, the Blackhawks moved out of the old Chicago Stadium and into the new United Center in the lockout-shortened 1995 season. Bernie Nichols and Joe Murphy both scored 20 goals over 48 games, and Chicago once again made it to the Western Conference Finals, losing to the Detroit Red Wings. Roenick, Belfour, and Chelios were all traded away as the Blackhawks faltered through the late 1990s until they missed the playoffs in 1998 for the first time in 29 years. Eric Daze, Alexei Zhamnov, Tony Amonte, and goalie Jocelyn Thibault emerged as three of the team's leading stars by this time. However, Chicago missed the playoffs for 4 straight years until they took a quick first-round exit in 2002. Amonte left for Phoenix in the summer of 2002, and Chicago missed the playoffs again in 2003. Following the lockout of the 2004-2005 season, new General Manager Dale Tallon set about restructuring the team in the hopes of making a playoff run. Tallon made several moves in the summer of 2005, most notably the signing of Stanley Cup-winning goalie Nikolai Khabibulin and All-Star defenseman Adrian Aucoin. However, injuries plagued Khabibulin and Aucoin (among others), and the Blackhawks again finished with one of the worst records in the league (26-43-13). A somber note was struck in February of 2004, when ESPN named the Blackhawks the worst franchise in professional sports. The Blackhawks reached another low point on May 16, 2006, when they announced that longtime tv/radio play-by-play announcer Pat Foley, the voice of the 'Hawks for 25 years, was not going to be brought back for a 26th year, a move unpopular amongst most Blackhawks fans.