Looking at the two teams that reached the Stanley Cup Final, there are a lot of similarities. The only difference is that one team has been on top for years now and the other may be on the cusp of becoming hockey’s next big thing.
The Chicago Blackhawks have been around the block more than a few times now and they’ll be taking on a club that is essentially the younger version of themselves. The Tampa Bay Lightning are built on skill, puck possession, mobile defense, loaded top six forward group and speed, but they're also younger and for many players, this will be their first crack at the Stanley Cup.
Chicago seeks its third Stanley Cup in six years, but standing in their way is a team that would love nothing more than giving the Blackhawks a taste of their own medicine. This series may not be the TV ratings winner New York-Chicago would have been, but this very well could be the most entertaining matchup this season could have presented us in terms of on-ice product.
The Eye on Hockey staff continues to get you ready for the 2015 Stanley Cup Final by giving you five things to know about each team. Here, we look at the Western Conference champion Chicago Blackhawks.
More Stanley Cup Final: Expert picks | Building the Blackhawks | Building the Lightning
1. Chicago’s experience advantage can’t be overstated
There isn’t a team in the NHL that boasts more recent and robust experience in the postseason than the Chicago Blackhawks. Since the team’s return to the postseason in 2009, which followed a 10-year span in which the organization made the playoffs once, the Blackhawks organization has played in 111 playoff games.
Jonathan Toews, Patrick Sharp and Niklas Hjalmarsson have played in every one of them. Patrick Kane and Duncan Keith have played in all but one. Brent Seabrook has played in 106 of those games. Marian Hossa, meanwhile, who was with the Detroit Red Wings for the 2009 Stanley Cup Final, has played in 113 playoff games since then.
All of those players, as you can imagine, are the NHL’s leaders in playoff games played since 2009. The Blackhawks won the Stanley Cup in both trips they’ve made to the final – in 2010 and 2013.
Kane leads all NHL players since 2009 with 111 playoff points, while Toews is second with 99. Three other Blackhawks are among the top seven for points since 2009, including Hossa (79), Sharp (77) and Keith (72). Only Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin are in that top-seven as the non-Blackhawks.
Playoff stats and rankings via hockey-reference.com.
2. Is this the last time we’ll see the Blackhawks' core as we know it?
With all of that experience could come some bittersweet feelings this offseason. There is a very good chance that the seven players that have been key figures in now three runs to the Stanley Cup Final, is going to get broken up. There won’t be a massive deconstruction, but there’s a chance one or more players from that group will become casualties of the Blackhawks’ tenuous cap situation.
Kane and Toews aren’t going anywhere for the next eight years. Each signed deals that will bring them $10.5 million per season on average. Those are the deals that will force Chicago to get creative again this summer.
Keith is under contract until 2023. Hjalmarsson is on a cap-friendly deal for the next three years.
Hossa still has six years left on his contract, which would take him to his age 42 season. If the Blackhawks traded him and he ended up retiring before the contract expired, Chicago would still be on the hook for cap-recapture penalties. Plus, he’s still extremely effective, so it seems less likely he'd be traded.
That leaves Patrick Sharp and Brent Seabrook as potential and realistic targets for trades. Seabrook has one year left on his current contract at a $5.8 million cap hit. Sharp has two years remaining with a $5.9 million cap hit. One of those two is going to have to go in all likelihood. Looking at Chicago’s D depth in these playoffs – even though top prospects Trevor van Riemsdyk and Stephen Johns were hurt, making matters worse – Seabrook remains essential. That leaves Sharp most at risk for an exit.
The Blackhawks could explore other options, like shedding a bigger contract like Bryan Bickell’s, but there’s a lot more space to be gained by moving one of the core players, as upsetting as that would probably be to Blackhawks fans.
Should the Blackhawks win the Cup one more time here with that group of seven, it might make it a little less difficult to say goodbye to the players they'll undoubtedly have to.
Salary figures via generalfanager.com.
3. Joel Quenneville vs. Jon Cooper is going to be really fun
Watching the coaching matchup in this series could be a lot of fun. The first two times Joel Quenneville went head-to-head with other coaches in the Stanley Cup Final, he was battling fellow head coaches that had already won Stanley Cups in their career – Peter Laviolette, then with the Philadelphia Flyers, and Boston Bruins head coach Claude Julien. This year, he’ll take on Jon Cooper, a second-year head coach who has won just about every championship you can win outside of the Stanley Cup.
The disparity in NHL experience here could not be more verbose. Quenneville has been behind the bench for 18 seasons in the NHL. Over that time, he has coached 1,375 NHL games. Only two coaches in the history of the game have won more games than Quenneville’s 754 – Al Arbour and Scotty Bowman. Quenneville should surpass Arbour by next season.
On the other side, Jon Cooper has coached in 180 NHL games. Quenneville will have to be careful though as Cooper has already taken out Mike Babcock, Michel Therrien and Alain Vigneault, all more vastly experienced head coaches.
These coaches also appear to be quite different despite the similarities in the way their teams play. Quenneville is constantly tinkering with his lineup, while Cooper is more prone to let it ride. One also loves line matching (hey, Joel) and the other let's his lines roll more naturally (hello, Jon). It's going to be fun to see how these two match wits.
4. Jonathan Toews’ line matching could be big key for Blackhawks defensively
The Chicago Blackhawks are about to meet the deadliest top-six forward group they’ve seen in these playoffs. That means Quenneville has to make a decision about who he matches Jonathan Toews, his best defensive forward, against. He’s going to get the Steven Stamkos line or the Triplets (Tyler Johnson, Nikita Kucherov and Ondrej Palat), but which one?
Toews has the versatility to go head-to-head with anyone, but the dynamic of his line changes a bit when it’s Patrick Kane on the right wing instead of Marian Hossa. The Blackhawks skewed more offensively late in the series against the Ducks, which saw Kane on Toews’ line from the end of Game 5 straight through to the Game 7 victory. If Quenneville maintains that lineup choice, it will be interesting to see what kind of matchups he’ll try to play.
The Lightning tend to focus on line matching much less than the Blackhawks do, it seems. That means we could have a good idea of who Quenneville likes Toews against right away in Game 1 despite Chicago not having last change on the road.
5. Does Chicago’s defensive depth finally bite them?
This is a question that has been asked for a few weeks now and the answer so far has been a resounding no. Since losing fifth defenseman Michal Rozsival, Chicago’s bottom six has been a revolving door among Kimmo Timonen, Kyle Cumiskey and David Rundblad. None have been particularly great, but it may not matter with how little they play.
Chicago’s defense has been taxed throughout the playoffs. If time on ice stats weren’t kept, we’d just go on believing that Duncan Keith never comes off the ice. The scary part about Kieth in particular, is that he never looked tired. He almost looked better at the end of the Western Conference Final despite ridiculous, but necessary usage.
The speed of the Tampa Bay Lightning, as pointed out by my colleague Adam Gretz, is going to present a new challenge to this defense. Anaheim tried to wear Chicago’s D down with aggressive forechecking and physical play. Tampa Bay will simply try to beat them by outskating them and they’re one of maybe three teams in the league that have the skillset to at least come close to doing that.
With all the hockey the top four of Chicago’s defense has played, maybe they finally break down at the end of the season. But we haven’t seen it happen yet and if it doesn’t, Chicago is going to be extremely tough to beat in a best-of-7.