Selling hope: It's working for Hawks

Sunday night was just like old times at a Blackhawks game.

Three hours before the first puck dropped, a sidewalk entrepreneur approached. "Got any extra tickets?" he asked.

No, sorry, but the message was clear: This game was sold out. It was a real sellout. No seats remained. No standing room. No nooks. No crannies. No nothing.

Just like when 20,000 fans crammed into the old 16,666-seat Chicago Stadium. Just like when the Hawks were relevant.

Of course, the old times weren't always the good old days in either the old barn or the new one.

Sometimes they were just the old days.

Too often the Red Wings came into the United Center and had their way with the Hawks, and so it was again on this night.

Before you could say Henrik Zetterberg -- 50 seconds to be precise -- he scored the Wings' first goal in what would become a 3-1 victory.

"We didn't want to start like that," said Hawks winger Martin Havlat.

The loss was the Hawks' fifth straight, dropping them to .500, to last in the Central Division and to 13th of 15 teams in the Western Conference.

The concern has to be that the Hawks' early success on the ice and burgeoning buzz around town will evaporate back into local anonymity.

The pressure applied to this young team is that if it slips back, fans will slip away.

Then again, maybe they won't. Not for a while, anyway.

The Hawks are selling what all teams in this town sell and what Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee sold in Iowa.

The Hawks are selling a high heap of hope.

It comes in the form of new club chairman Rocky Wirtz, new president John McDonough and a new home TV policy.

The package also includes a couple 19-year-old prodigies, Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane, though Toews currently is one of myriad injured Hawks.

Overall the Hawks are embarking on the long road back. Sunday night I completed the long road back to them.

Surprisingly, Rocky and Johnny Mac didn't send a limo to drive me to the game. There were no bands and parades when I arrived.

No problem. I came back for the game, which is so appealing because it features not only great athletes, but great athletes doing athletic things under physical duress ON FREAKIN' ICE SKATES!

That's what hooked me into the sport decades ago. Skilled athletes performing on ice like others in other sports do on less slippery slopes like wood and grass.

The ice was still frozen when I came back Sunday night, and in some ways so was time.

Oh, there were strange wrinkles like new rules, a new Hawk named Byfuglien and a new set of scantily clad beauties shoveling ice shavings from the playing surface during stoppages.

But there also were comfortable old wrinkles like a Zamboni cruising between periods ... the Hawks' goalie receiving a slashing penalty for directing his stick into a Detroit winger's, er, private parts ... fans chanting "De-troit (bleeps)!" ... the crowd causing goose bumps by cheering throughout the National Anthem ... the goal light flashing ... the siren blaring ...

Some day the good times will have to include more than a .500 team, but Sunday the spectacle of hope was enough for me.