While I’ve been fortunate to attend several MLB, NBA and NHL playoff games over the years, it all began with a wild game on a Thursday night in Chicago, 17 years ago today.
As a kid who was drawn to watching sports from a young age, the playoffs in any league felt like an animal of their own when watching on TV.
I had been to a good handful of regular season baseball and hockey games throughout my early childhood, but it was clear even at a young age that the energy inside arenas and stadiums during the postseason is simply impossible to replicate.
My first true realization of this came in 2003, when the Chicago Cubs were five outs away from their first World Series appearance in nearly 60 years at the time. After attending a regular season game at Wrigley Field that summer, the atmosphere looked particularly charged in the playoffs from my vantage point of watching on TV. My dad made his way to two of the Cubs’ home playoff games that season, including the infamous Game 6 of the NLCS, colloquially known as “The Bartman Game.”
From that moment on, my childhood imagination simply took over when picturing what it would be like to attend a playoff game – to see action with the highest possible stakes unfold in front of your eyes. Fortunately enough, I was able to find out for myself less than six years later.
My interest in hockey wasn’t as concrete as my fascination with baseball was. While I had been introduced to the sport early on as a child, I didn’t cling to hockey quite as much for a variety of reasons. The Blackhawks were abysmal for much of the early-to-mid 2000’s, with the 2004-05 NHL lockout only further complicating matters.
Even if I had taken a deliberate interest into the Blackhawks, I was only able to watch away games for much of my early childhood due to asinine broadcast policies instituted by former owner Bill Wirtz. It wasn’t until 2008-09 that all home games were on TV in the Chicago area – allowing for a beautiful coincidence.
At this point, the Blackhawks were among the most exciting young teams in the NHL. Led by a young core of Jonathan Toews, Patrick Kane, Brent Seabrook and Duncan Keith, Chicago emerged as a competitive team for the first time in a handful of seasons, with Kane and Toews in particular hitting their stride in what was their sophomore season.
It was early in the season when I began to take an interest – my dad still maintained season tickets he had held since the early 1980’s, and I checked out a game with a friend in November 2008 to see the Blackhawks play the Boston Bruins – a game that turned out to be an Original Six slugfest ending in a shootout victory for Boston.
That game kickstarted an immediate rekindling of interest in hockey, leading me to be glued in front of the TV for all of the remaining Blackhawks games that season. My dad and the rest of my family caught on soon thereafter, and I ultimately attended a dozen regular season home games that year.
While the sexual assault scandal involving the Stanley Cup champion 2010 Blackhawks that roiled the franchise in 2021 permanently soured my image of the team, my memories of taking in all of this incredibly riveting and heart-stopping hockey still remain overwhelmingly positive to this day.
Following a 104-point regular season that gave the Blackhawks their best 82-game record since the 1992-93 season, Chicago was seeded fourth in the Western Conference and matched up with the fifth-seeded Calgary Flames in the first round of the playoffs. With the Hawks holding home ice advantage, I was given the amazing opportunity to attend Game 1 – not just any Game 1, but the first Blackhawks playoff game since 2002. I was in 7th grade at the time, and it had been since I was in kindergarten that the Blackhawks played a game that was this important.
I remember going to school that day keeping a countdown of the minutes on my notebook until the game started, eager to get picked up from school to get ready to head down to the United Center with my mom and two sisters, who I was attending the game with.
Upon arrival outside the United Center, it was immediately clear that this was no regular hockey game. Lines stretched outside the gate waiting for doors to open a full 90 minutes before puck drop, with fans wasting no time in heckling the lone Flames fan waiting to get inside.
Before the game started, I had a mission of my own – unload the few hundred bucks I had been saving up the previous few months on an authentic jersey, which is an especially pricey grab for NHL fans. After being drawn towards Kris Versteeg due to his prowess in the shootout and on the penalty kill, I picked out a black jersey with his name on it – a choice I’m especially happy with as the Blackhawks didn’t bring back their black jerseys again for another 17 years.
After putting on my new gear and getting ready for the game to start, the sheer energy of the building took over. The sense of urgency from loud, hungry Chicago fans who had endured years of empty seats in the United Center for a moment of this magnitude, which all perfectly led into the deafening national anthem, with Blackhawks fans maintaining a tradition of applauding through the Star-Spangled Banner that began during the 1991 NHL All-Star Game.
While the Blackhawks were the higher-seeded team and appeared to be the better team overall, the Flames were still an incredibly formidable match, featuring former Vezina Trophy winner Miikka Kiprusoff as the netminder with former league MVP Jarome Iginla still leading the way with elite offensive production. That’s of course also not to mention the Flames’ wealth of playoff experience, with Iginla and Kiprusoff coming within a goal of the Stanley Cup just five years earlier in 2004.
The Blackhawks’ youth and anxiety was apparent early on, with plenty of early game jitters and an anxious crowd perhaps helping to facilitate the first goal of the game, coming just over eight minutes and 30 seconds into the game from Calgary winger Dave Moss. The tally sent a wave of silence through the United Center, with a jubilant atmosphere having become much more cautious.
After exchanging penalties in the first period, the Blackhawks appeared to settle into the rhythm of the game, certainly being benefitted by playoff veteran Nikolai Khabibulin in net – who ironically was the winning goaltender in the 2004 Stanley Cup Finals for the Tampa Bay Lightning over the Flames.
Chicago finally broke through past the halfway point in the second period, with unlikely scorer Cam Barker connecting on a second-chance wrist shot to tie the game – a goal that sent a ripple of elation as well as a collective sigh of relief through the United Center.
The score remained the same until early in the third period, when point-per-game forward Mike Cammalleri delivered with a go-ahead goal just short of four minutes into the frame.
I remember during a stoppage of play with around 7 minutes left in the game, I sat to think about what a cool experience this was, trying to soften the blow of losing the first game of a playoff series at home while having such high hopes for this young roster.
Those feelings were quickly set aside when just a few minutes later, stoic veteran Martin Havlat collected his own rebound and buried a shot past Kiprusoff, scoring the equalizer with just over five-and-a-half minutes remaining in regulation.
I had been to some exciting games and multiple overtime winners that regular season, but I hadn’t quite heard anything like the eruption of the crowd after the game-tying goal up to that point. With Chelsea Dagger blaring, a sea of red rally towels waving and a crowd fully back on board with the idea of winning this game, the reaction to Havlat’s goal was truly a sensory whirlwind that is only possible when in the house for a playoff game.
Khabibulin and Kiprusoff held serve to send the game to overtime, a nerve-wracking prospect for my mom on what was a school night for myself and my younger sister, who was just in fourth grade at the time.
While the instant thought of every fan in the building is that the playoff overtime is destined to go for hours on end before a flukey goal finally breaks the silence, April 16, 2009 was anything but.
After Calgary won the opening draw of overtime, a rinkwide pass from Flames defenseman Jordan Leopold was picked off halfway to its destination from Blackhawks center Dave Bolland, who moved back the other way with none other than Martin Havlat trailing him on the right wing.
With fellow winger Andrew Ladd crashing his way to the net to provide some traffic in front of Kiprusoff, a picture-perfect feed from Bolland connected with Havlat before the veteran ripped a wrist shot past the Calgary goaltender – securing the win for the Blackhawks after just 12 seconds of overtime play.
Equally shocked and pumped up at the outcome, I leaped out of my seat before instinctively running towards the section’s exit – which was customary for us after overtime wins or losses during the regular season. But this was different – and after a few seconds on the concourse by myself after realizing no one else followed me, I met back up with my family by our seats to take in a moment unlike anything I had seen up until that point.
While I no longer cheer for the Blackhawks and now haven’t attended a Stanley Cup Playoff game in nine years, the memories from the team’s dynastic run through the early 2010’s will remain forever – watching countless exciting wins with friends and family while getting to take in dozens of games in-person over the years supersede any damage that a scandal could bring.
Looking back on all of those memories now, I view the game I took in 17 years ago today as the beautiful beginning to it all, and a reminder of how it’s much more than just a game for so many fans – it’s a way to build friendships, to spend time with family and to forget about everything else for just a little bit.
Sports are a beautiful refuge in so many ways, and sometimes it’s good to just sit back and be thankful for the ride.
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