Behind the scenes of Blackhawks' 'One Goal III' book

When it comes to commemorating championships, the Blackhawks have become old pros at it.

After winning the Stanley Cup three times in six seasons, they've had a lot of practice. They've produced commemorative videos for the 2013 and 2015 championships, and each title has been documented with a 240-page keepsake book named after their "One Goal," organizational motto. The latest edition, "One Goal III," was released in November.

For a look behind-the-scenes of what went into "One Goal III," the Daily Herald talked with Adam Kempenaar, the Blackhawks' senior director of new media and creative services. Kempenaar deflects much of the praise for the book's success and design to his talented staff, which includes Creative Director John Sandberg (who designed it), Associate Editor Emerald Gao (who wrote several essays and did copyediting) and Graphic Designer Sean Grady (who designed the cover).

Q: What was the biggest difference putting together this edition? Was it easier or harder than the previous two?

AK: It's easier in the sense that, having been through it twice before, you know what things to look out for, and you know what the process is. For the first time ever, we were ahead of the game.

That said, the process of putting together a 240-page hardcover book ... I don't even know how many words are in the book, but obviously there's a ton of essays. We don't want it just to be a coffee-table book, where you just thumb through it and look at the pictures, even though the pictures are a huge part of it and the photography's wonderful. We want it to tell the whole story of the year, so we think it has some great essays.

Of course, when you have Bob Verdi, you're already starting off pretty strong. So, we had that. I also wanted to get the perspective of all our broadcasters, which is something we had done in the past, and from (a Blackhawks ambassador) in the case of Denis Savard. So, we have all their different takes on it.

In 2013, we kind of wowed people by putting a video screen inside the front of the book. That was really cool, but we knew we didn't want to just repeat that.

So, we included some of those things you can find inside the book, the goodies, the inserts, like the banner and even the championship belt magnet and things like that, and the in-motion player cards, that were picked from seven iconic moments from the playoffs. That was really our goal, just to try to make it a true commemorative that told the entire story of the championship run and gave people the access, whether it was with photos or with some of the stories they otherwise wouldn't get.

Q: When does the process start for these books?

AK: That's where I talk about the benefit of having done two before. Obviously, like a lot of people, we're very superstitious in sports. We don't start to count our chickens before they hatch, but what you do with that benefit of having done it before, is you know that when the playoffs start, we may not win it all, but we could win it all. And if we win it all, that means we're doing another book.

So, we need to go through this whole process as if we're doing a book. We do that with the movie, as well. So, from the moment the playoffs start, we're shooting footage as if this might end up in a movie later, and we are thinking about each series as if it might end up in a book later.

The biggest thing there are the photos. We get thousands of photos from every game, practice days, the behind-the-scenes stuff, so we know that picking those photos is the most cumbersome and sort of tedious task. So, we are going through those photos as they come in, on a game-by-game or series-by-series basis, at minimum, to make sure that we're already sort of putting them in the right folders and we know where to look.

Q: How long does the process of completing the book take, start to finish?

AK: Going through the photos starts in April, but the true production really starts the day after we win and goes until late September.

We've just got an amazing staff, from a design standpoint and from an editing and writing standpoint, but it's three months of work, and that's just the writing and designing and copyediting. Behind the scenes there's the business side of it too.

At the end, it's all hopefully worth it when you see the book, and we are very proud of it.

Q: How tough is it to look back over an entire season and put it all into a 240-page book that encapsulates the whole thing?

AK: That is really hard. The first book, in 2010, had the overarching theme of, "First Cup in 49 years," and the second one (2013) had the best start in NHL history, so you had that, but you also had the two goals in 17 seconds [in Game 6 of the Cup Final] and that whole thing, so that took on a life of its own.

This time, it became the larger question of trying to put into perspective how crazy it is, in this salary-cap era, to do this. That was definitely something we had in mind, but the other thing we definitely thought about a lot was just the connection to fans and the emotion of going through all this stuff.

Q: How many copies were printed?

AK: That's a good question. I don't know the exact number off the top of my head, because we start and then we sort of keep the option (of printing more) if we want to reprint or do something like that. I know we printed a few more than we did in 2013, because we had only a few thousand of those left.

We wanted to have a few thousand left, because we didn't want to run out completely like in 2010. The 2010 book is gone. I don't even have any of those. That's how hard it was to get a copy of 2010, so in 2013 and 2015, we wanted to make sure we didn't get down to that scarce amount.

Q: It was probably stressful, but was it also fun to coordinate these books?

AK: Oh, without a doubt. It removes any offseason whatsoever for us. In August, for example, there's no convention, there's no draft and you're getting ready for training camp. It's usually a little bit of a quiet time to gear up for next year, but for us? Nope. Nonstop, all day, weekends, you name it. Our department was cranking on this book nonstop. It definitely is a lot of work, but it's so much fun to relive the stories, go back through the photos, see it laid out on the page and then to actually see it when it's in a fan's hands. It's worth every bit of it, for sure.

'Hat Trick' screenings

The Blackhawks' Stanley Cup championship movie, "Hat Trick" will have another sold-out suburban screening this weekend.

The 65-minute film will be shown at the Charlestowne 18 Theatres at 10 a.m. Saturday. The theatre complex is located at 3740 E. Main St., in St. Charles. Doors open at 9 a.m. and a wait-list for tickets is available at events.dailyherald.com.

The film previously was screened to capacity audiences at the Elk Grove Theatre and York Theatre. Additional screenings may be added this winter, so check at a chicagoblackhawks.com or the Daily Herald events listing.

Along with the Blackhawks Street Tea, the Blackhawks Store retail truck will also be on the premises so fans can purchase DVDs of "Hat Trick" and copies of the "One Goal III" championship book.