Chicago Blackhawks: Eulogy for the 2018-19 season

Although there are still some games to be played, the Chicago Blackhawks season is over.

Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to mourn the 2018-2019 Chicago Blackhawks season. While the season is not technically dead, we can say with fair confidence that it should be laid to rest. Only a miracle will resurrect this team’s playoff hopes now.

The season started with mild promise, as the Hawks went to overtime in their first five games, winning three. Indeed, the October record of 6-4-3 gave fans hope of a bounce-back year.

Alas, a 3-8-2 November, complete with a 1-6-1 road record, signified that the Hawks’ health was declining. Legendary coach Joel Quenneville was fired in an effort to jumpstart the team’s heart, but a middling December and January did no favors.

We had hope in February, but alas, the Hawks’ season has likely marched off this mortal coil thanks to a brutal stretch in which the team lost four of five – including two tough one-goal losses to the Colorado Avalanche and Dallas Stars and a meltdown in Los Angeles against the Kings.

While we pray for a miracle on ice, we must acknowledge that while the fight was valiant, it appears to be for naught. Our eyes now turn from the sad present to the hopeful future. Perhaps future Hawks teams will be able to return to the glory of the past decade before Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane transition from current stars to former hockey players.

There’s an eight-point gap with 16 games to play. While stranger things have happened, it is likely that the Hawks are clinically dead. So let us mourn a season in which drudgery turned to hope that then turned back to sadness.

May we let the Hawks quietly play out the string before this season passes into the great goodnight. Corey Crawford is back, and for that, we give thanks. We also take solace in Colin Delia, Dylan Strome, Patrick Kane’s continued high level of play, Alex DeBrincat, and perhaps Erik Gustafsson.

As much as we may mourn another spring in which the Blackhawks don’t earn a spot in the postseason, let us also take solace in the fact that we will be spared watching a once-mighty three-time champion get eaten for lunch in a first-round series. Some teams have a destiny that involves best-of-sevens – this Hawks team just was not one of them.

Hope, they say, springs eternal. So as we return this team to the dust from whence it came, let us prepare for the birth of next year’s team, and bask in the promise, however unlikely, of a return to contending form.