Thursday will be extra emotional for Chicago Blackhawks fans

The Chicago Blackhawks have been a very poorly ran organization from 2016 to 2021 and we will see what the new regime brings from 2022 on. However, there were certainly some great times for this franchise in the years leading up to that.

Regardless if things were good or bad, Hawks fans had Pat Foley to listen to on the broadcast. He has done play-by-play for multiple decades and become a hockey legend in doing so. Foley is one of the all-time greatest Chicago (and sports in general) broadcasters.

On Thursday night, he is calling his final Chicago Blackhawks game when they take on the San Jose Sharks at the United Center. It is going to be a night filled with happy memories and extreme sadness that this is the end of the legendary broadcaster’s career.

Pat Foley has seen so many different generations of Blackhawks as he has been behind their mic for 39 seasons. Legendary players have come through this franchise’s ranks and Foley has seen a lot of them.

Pat Foley has given the Chicago Blackhawks everything he had during his career.

Of course, the highlight is in the latter stage of his career when Jonathan Toews, Patrick Kane, and Duncan Keith formed the greatest core in team history that led to three Stanley Cups. After some of the bad years that led up to those days, it had to feel refreshing for Foley.

Celebrating him is going to be extra emotional for Blackhawks fans. We have seen legendary broadcasters in this town like Harry Caray and Ken Harrelson so everyone knows good broadcasting when they hear it and Pat Foley is in that mix.

There are some Blackhawks calls of Foley’s that fans will remember forever. Whether it is his “Hawks win”, “Bannerman”, “big save”, or any of his other catchphrases, he was always extremely memorable to listen to. You don’t hear calls like that from the newer generation of broadcasters as much.

Foley has put an emphasis on the fact that he finally gets to play golf a lot more and is excited to do it in his future. He hasn’t done the 82-game grind this season so he kind of eased into retirement which had to be nice for him.

Chicago fans of all ages are going to miss Pat and all that he brought to the Chicago Blackhawks broadcast. The sport of hockey was always the fourth most popular in the city of Chicago but he helped make it more known.

That is important to the die-hard fans. Everybody deserves to enjoy this amazing game and Pat knew that in his calls of the game. We were lucky to have had him for so long. It will be fun to see if he has anything left in the world of hockey beyond broadcasting in the coming years.

With whatever he decides, we wish him good luck. It will be interesting to see if these Blackhawks are able to snap an eight-game losing streak with a win over the Sharks to send Pat Foley into the sunset the right way.