Ranking The 10 Greatest Chicago Sports Teams In History
By Erik Lambert
The 1960-1961 Chicago Blackhawks. 8. team. 94. . .
The year is 1961, playing then as the Chicago Blackhawks and hosting opponents in a now forgotten Chicago Stadium, the young team was rolling through the Stanley Cup Playoffs. Their most impressive feat was the dethroning of a dominant Montreal Canadiens team that had found themselves the defending champions for five consecutive years. That title would quickly be stripped away.
Moving onto the Final, the Blackhawks would face the Detroit Red Wings and bounce back and forth between Chicago Stadium and the Detroit Olympia. Each team won their home games through the first five matchups. It wasn’t until Game 6 that Chicago finally broke through, crushing the Wings 5-1 en route to the title.
This would be the first all-American Final in 11 years. The 1961 ‘Hawks played a game similar to the 2010 team. With Stan Mikita and Bobby Hull quickly making themselves household names while still finding their game; Pierre Pilote would be entering his “golden years” and Glenn Hall knew only one thing: keep the puck out of his net.
These players would dominate the scoring sheets and lock down key roles in bringing the Stanley Cup back to Chicago for the third time. The top three scorers throughout those playoffs – Pilote, Hull, and Mikita – now find themselves among the elites in the Hockey Hall of Fame. The 1961 teams may have created the mold for the style of gameplay that we see from our current teams today.
They also bred some of the best hockey players that the organization, and the league, have ever seen. What defined this particular team was their ability to send a dominant Montreal Canadiens home early. They played top-tier hockey during every shift, of every game, in every series. Those Blackhawks not only inspired the future generations, they became one the of the best teams in Chicago sports history.