Ex-Hawks player enjoying youth hockey resurgence

Steve Dubinsky is among the former Blackhawks players living in the suburbs enjoying the team's resurgence and appearance in the Stanley Cup Finals against the Philadelphia Flyers.

Dubinsky, 39, is director of the HockeyZone youth program at Glacier Ice Arena in Vernon Hills. He started with Glacier HockeyZone in September 2005, when the Hawks were at their nadir on Chicago's sports landscape.

"I use my kids as an example," Dubinsky said. "Three, four, five years ago, there really wasn't an interest to go to the games and wear the jersey. Now, they want to go to every game and have jerseys and T-shirts."

Selected by the Hawks in the 1990 draft, the right-winger joined the team for the 1993-94 season just a couple of years removed from the last Stanley Cup Finals appearance that ended in a four-game sweep by the Pittsburgh Penguins.

Hockey still was a hot ticket when Dubinsky played alongside Chris Chelios, Jeremy Roenick and other stars during his Blackhawks career in Chicago Stadium's last season. His playing days ended in St. Louis with the 2002-03 campaign.

Dubinsky, now living in Deerfield, played about 61/2 years with the Hawks. He recalled what it was like when he started visiting a sparsely populated United Center to watch games as an ex-player seven years ago.

"Some of the games that I used to go to when there was 4,000 people, I think as a former player you kind of feel for the guys in the ice," he said.

Dubinsky, who notched 25 goals in 10 years in the National Hockey League, can relate to players such as forwards Adam Burish, Ben Eager and Dave Bolland on the Hawks' third and fourth lines. Those players don't get many goals, but they give the big scorers a rest and typically provide a physical element on the ice.

When asked by the young players at Glacier how many goals he scored, Dubinsky explains how he served a valuable role as a forward without putting the puck in the net often, similar to Burish, Eager and Bolland.

Dubinsky said it wasn't long ago when it seemed a generation of young hockey players and fans would be lost because of the Hawks' woes. That no longer should be the case with the team's upswing and commitment to community relations.

"It's really interesting to see how much of an impact the success of a pro team in a city can have on a sport. Our (Glacier HockeyZone) numbers are growing and growing."

<div class="infoBox"> <h1>More Coverage</h1> <div class="infoBoxContent"> <div class="infoArea"> <h2>Video</h2> <ul class="video"> <!-- Start of Brightcove Player --> <div style="display:none"> </div> <!-- By use of this code snippet, I agree to the Brightcove Publisher T and C found at https://accounts.brightcove.com/en/terms-and-conditions/. --> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://admin.brightcove.com/js/BrightcoveExperiences.js"></script> <object id="myExperience90386292001" class="BrightcoveExperience"> <param name="bgcolor" value="#FFFFFF" /> <param name="width" value="300" /> <param name="height" value="255" /> <param name="playerID" value="18011347001" /> <param name="publisherID" value="1659832549"/> <param name="isVid" value="true" /> <param name="dynamicStreaming" value="true" /> <param name="@videoPlayer" value="90386292001" /> </object> <!-- This script tag will cause the Brightcove Players defined above it to be created as soon as the line is read by the browser. If you wish to have the player instantiated only after the rest of the HTML is processed and the page load is complete, remove the line. --> <script type="text/javascript">brightcove.createExperiences();</script> <!-- End of Brightcove Player --> </ul> </div> </div> </div>