Imrem: NHL's most exciting time of year
As the NHL playoffs commence, it's easy to take for granted that you'll always be able to take for granted that the Blackhawks will be contending for Stanley Cup championships.
Well, no, nothing is forever unless it turns out that way, and it never turns out that way in sports.
Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane can't play the rest of their lives, much less ours.
Marian Hossa, Brent Seabrook and Duncan Keith will be gone sooner or later. So will Corey Crawford and Niklas Hjalmarsson.
Then we'll wonder where they went, leaving us with nothing but memories of the good times rolling.
So appreciate what the Hawks are providing now. Before you know it they'll be gone like the 1980s Bears and the '90s Bulls, teams that produced a decade of thrills apiece before evaporating.
The Hawks began another Stanley Cup postseason run Wednesday night at St. Louis with the potential for the run to last anywhere from four games to four series.
"It's the most exciting time of the year," Joel Quenneville said.
Game 1 punctuated the Hawks coach's assessment by jockeying back and forth into overtime before David Backes scored to give St. Louis a 1-0 victory.
"We played exactly the right way," Quenneville said.
The loss notwithstanding, Hawks fans, enjoy every minute of this postseason and however many more postseasons that Toews, Kane and the rest are in their primes.
Enjoy storylines like whether these Hawks can be the first team since 1998 to repeat as Stanley Cup champions.
Enjoy seeing whether Kane can extend his remarkable season, whether Crawford can be a playoff whiz again and whether Keith can refrain from whacking somebody with his stick again.
What'll happen this year? That's the beauty of it. Nobody knows like nobody knew the Bears would win only one Super Bowl or that the Bulls would win six NBA titles.
Likewise, nobody knew the Hawks would win three Stanley Cup championships in six years with a chance to win more the next six years.
The Hawks embarked on their latest magical, mystery tour in St. Louis, destined to finish at, well, a location to be determined.
In the meantime, every shift and period and game has a chance to feature something that nobody can remember seeing before.
It would be nice to relax, step back and view each moment in the context of this entire lengthy Blackhawks Era of championship contention.
But each of these runs is a captivating entity unto itself with so much emphasis on every minor injury, every coach's decision and every referee's call.
The big picture is for later; the narrow lens is for now.
The current Hawks are helped by having so many veterans of their championship runs in 2010, 2013 and 2015, which is why the Hawks are among teams right behind the Capitals as favorites to win this year's Stanley Cup.
But the Hawks' core players aren't the same now as they were in past seasons because nobody is the same from year to year.
No wonder it's a magical, mystery tour with the Blackhawks hoping to make magic of the mystery.
"We'll make sure we're ready for the next game," Quenneville said.
The run didn't start well Wednesday night, but the Blues and Hawks have only just begun.
mimrem@dailyherald.com