Defending the Cup: New additions will have Hawks hungry for more

Everywhere the Blackhawks go this season they're going to be asked the same question.

Can they win the Stanley Cup for a second year in a row?

It's probably a question better asked in April when the playoffs begin rather than now with the postseason seven months away.

“You can't win the Stanley Cup in October, center Patrick Sharp said. “It's a process, and you've got to get better as the season goes on. You've got to keep building. We know what we have on this team and I think we have a team capable of challenging for the Stanley Cup again. I like the make up of our team, but it's a long way from now.

There hasn't been a repeat Stanley Cup champion since 1997-98, when Scotty Bowman coached the Detroit Red Wings to back-to-back titles.

Since then, the task of repeating has become even more challenging in the salary cap era of the National Hockey League. As the Hawks and their fans learned this summer, keeping championship teams together is difficult. Ten players that helped hoist the Stanley Cup last June in Philadelphia are gone, which is why so few people are giving the Hawks a chance to do it again.

“It doesn't bother me if critics pick us to win or not, captain Jonathan Toews said. “It's a long way away. Halfway through the season maybe we'll be the heavy favorite or maybe we won't be even close.

“Even if we had everybody back it would be difficult to repeat, defenseman Duncan Keith said. “There are a lot of other great teams.

“It was tough to lose some of the players we lost they're great guys and great teammates and we won a championship together, but we have some players coming in that are hungry and eager to prove themselves. That hunger is going to be great for our locker room because it just adds more to our fire and our hunger to repeat.

Marty Turco never has won a Stanley Cup, nor has he ever played in the Finals. Turco has replaced Antti Niemi as the Hawks' No. 1 goalie and is one of those guys hungry to experience what many of his new teammates did.

Toews believes that trying to win another Cup for a veteran such as Turco can only help keep the challenge fresh.

“There's a guy right there who has had a very respectable career, but he's not satisfied with what he's done and his own numbers. He wants to go out there and win, Toews said.

“For some of us young guys who have been in the league for two, three or four years, we've got to realize how lucky we are to have won a championship so early and to know that's a special thing to have that experience. You've got to find a way to want it even more the next time around so to have a teammate like that, I think, really adds that motivation and hunger a little bit.

This remains an elite hockey team still perhaps the best team in the NHL when you consider Keith, Brent Seabrook, Niklas Hjalmarsson and Brian Campbell all return on defense along with four of the game's premier scorers in Toews, Sharp, Patrick Kane and Marian Hossa, plus shutdown center Dave Bolland.

“What's not to like? Toews asked.

“We're the same Blackhawks we were last year we have the same core group of guys, winger Troy Brouwer said.

The key could be how role players such as Fernando Pisani, Bryan Bickell, Jack Skille, Viktor Stalberg, Jake Dowell and John Scott respond to being significant pieces to the puzzle.

“I know the fans are worried, Kane said with a laugh. “It's like every fan that comes to me, I just have to tell them just relax. They all want to talk about the changes, and I say just don't worry about it; we still have all the players who were the best players on the team last year, and we have some new players who are ready to step up.

“Hopefully we can surprise some people like we've done in the past.

History might be against them, but the Hawks aren't worried about their chances to repeat right now with the regular just getting started Thursday night in Colorado and Saturday's home opener against Detroit to follow.

“There's been so much talk about repeating and are we going to be as good as last year, but the way we approach it and talk about it in this room is this group of players getting better every day, Keith said. “We're not the same team. We're a different team with different players. It's just a matter of improving every day and working to develop this team and chemistry to the point we know it needs to be.