Imrem: Good time to remember Sharp's Blackhawks legacy
Let's not let Patrick Sharp get out of town without a round of applause.
After all, the full-page ad he placed in Sunday's edition of the Daily Herald paid my salary for a few months.
The Blackhawks traded Sharp to Dallas last week, so what is his legacy here?
All you need to know is that there's an eighth annual Blackhawks Convention scheduled for this weekend and it's sold out as usual.
When Sharp arrived in Chicago on Dec. 5, 2005, the Hawks would have had to pay fans to fill a convention hall.
Sharp wasn't merely a member of the foundation leading to the Hawks' revival, he was a member of the foundation of the foundation.
Of what is considered the Hawks' championship core, Duncan Keith, Brent Seabrook and Sharp were here before the beginning. Jonathan Toews, Patrick Kane, Niklas Hjalmarsson and Marian Hossa came later.
Sharp, Keith and Seabrook endured some of the lonely, losing times that the others mostly missed.
Ten seasons later, though obscured a bit amid the noise accompanying the White Sox-Cubs series, Sharp did manage to be heard upon his exit.
The ad that Sharp placed in this newspaper and the two Chicago papers thanked the Hawks, Hawks fans and the entire city for the way he has been treated here.
Right back at you, sir.
The core that Sharp was a part of was asked to execute duel assignments: Not only win Stanley Cups but win the hearts and minds of local sports fans.
It's difficult to imagine athletes in the other mainstream sports agreeing to go so far out of their way to market their team away from the arena as much as in it.
After decades of popularity from Hull and Mikita to Savard and Larmer to Roenick and Chelios, the Hawks plunged first to unpopular and then to irrelevant.
Now, three Stanley Cup championships and years of United Center sellouts later …
Well, Sharp was one of the players who made the Blackhawks beloved again.
My goodness, water can't even be frozen in summer around here and local sports-talk radio devotes almost as much time to hockey as to baseball.
Heck, I'm writing a July column about the Hawks. A decade ago I couldn't even remember how to spell Hawcques.
Sharp fit nicely into the core that elevated the Hawks back onto the local sports landscape, then into the playoffs and then to championships.
The Hawks' core became a part of the community, participated in charitable events and overall made themselves available to promote the sport.
It wasn't coincidence that players like Sharp thanked Hawks fans for their support just as Hawks fans thanked them for their victories.
As a goal scorer's goal scorer, Patrick Sharp was right there at the forefront of hockey's burst back into prominence in Chicago.
The Sharpshooter, as he's called, scored a goal scorer's goals, big ones and little ones and many ones in between.
If that weren't enough, in 2011 Sharp was named one of Chicago Magazine's "50 Most Beautiful Chicagoans."
Even during scandalous rumors about Sharp and his teammates this past season, he and they maintained their dignity, popularity and championship focus.
Now, a few months later, Sharp's departure in a way is the beginning of the end of an era even if the Hawks keep winning without him.
Patrick Sharp is the first of the Blackhawks' original championship core to go, making him the first to be dearly missed.
mimrem@dailyherald.com