Ranking The 10 Greatest Chicago Sports Teams In History
By Erik Lambert
. The 2012-2013 Chicago Blackhawks. 3. team. 94. .
Determining the best Chicago Blackhawks team in the franchise’s history would likely have been a lot easier of a task ten years ago. But with three championships in the past nine years, the franchise has numerous teams to pick from. Call it recency bias (you’d need to be in your sixties or older to remember a Blackhawks Stanley Cup win outside of this decade), but the 2013 Chicago Blackhawks team is the greatest squad in franchise history and arguably Chicago sports history.
While the regular season was a shortened one due to a lockout at the start of the year, the Blackhawks finished 36-7-5 in their 48 games, tallying 77 out of a possible 96 points in the standings. For perspective, if they kept that pace up and played a full 82 game season, the team would have tied the NHL record for most points in a season with 132. The team did achieve records of their own, however, including the most games to start the season without a regulation loss; the team started with a 21-0-3 record for the first half of the shortened season.
The ‘Hawks would go on to win the President’s Trophy for most points in the NHL that season and are the only team in the last ten years to win both the President’s trophy and the Stanley Cup in the same season. But records in the regular season don’t mean much when it comes to defining a great team. It is what that team does in the postseason that matters. It is how a team responds to adversity. If you are looking for an example of a team with the heart of a champion, look no further.
After dispatching the Minnesota Wild in five games in the first round, the Blackhawks found themselves in a 3-1 hole against their biggest rivals, the Detroit Red Wings. A loss away from elimination, they fought back into the series with a Game 5 win at home, a third period come-from-behind win in Detroit in Game 6, and a Game 7 where they had the winning goal wiped out just before the end of regulation, but won in overtime anyway.
Two rounds later, in the Stanley Cup Final, the ‘Hawks performed one of the most incredible comebacks in sports history in Game 6 in Boston. In just 17 seconds time, the Blackhawks turned what looked like a Game 7 showdown into their second Stanley Cup championship in four years.
A team that never quit, was packed full of All-Stars and future Hall of Famers, and dominated on the ice more often than not, the 2013 Chicago Blackhawks were an absolute powerhouse that definitively ranks among the best teams in any sport that Chicago has ever seen.