Stars aligning for Hawks

Think of all the potentially relevant clichés.

Lightning always strikes twice ..® history repeats itself ..® it's déjà vu all over again ..®

Long-time Blackhawks fans -- really, really longtime -- have to be hoping they prove correct.

More than anyone else, those folks have reason to believe what's happening now on the United Center ice is at least a sequel and perhaps a remake.

Young and old are turning out to see the current Hawks, including the 21,715 who watched Sunday afternoon's 2-1 victory over the Avalanche.

Fans came to see this team play and to assess whether it has what it takes to make an improbable run into the playoffs.

Regardless of the race's outcome, more important is that this could be the foundation for long-term success.

If it is, rookies Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane likely will be the foundation's foundation.

Just as, those long-time fans can tell you, Bobby Hull and Stan Mikita were a half-century ago.

It's too much to expect Toews and Kane to become what Hull and Mikita did, but circumstances are strikingly similar.

Hull arrived 50 years ago and Mikita did full-time two seasons later. The Hawks began a streak of 38 playoff appearances in 39 years, including winning the Stanley Cup in 1961.

Will lightning strike again? Will history repeat itself? Will this be déjà vu all over again?

"We know we're going to be good," Hawks head coach Denis Savard insists. "It's a matter of time. We're going to be good."

Hawks coach Rudy Pilous might or not have said the same thing during Hull's rookie season, but he was correct if he did.

To that point, the Hawks were pathetic. Prior to making the playoffs in Hull's second season, they qualified only once during the previous 11.

In a six-team NHL at the time, the Hawks finished sixth in nine of those seasons. Their defensemen and forwards were so bad that goalie Al Rollins was league MVP on a 12-51-7 team in 1954.

Fast-forward to the last decade of Hawks hockey, if you can call it hockey. In a league where 16 teams make the playoffs, the Hawks qualified in just one of the past nine seasons and not since 2002.

The pre-Toews/Kane stretch hasn't been quite as bleak as the pre-Hull/Mikita stretch was, but it was pretty close.

"We need to continue to play to win," Savard said. "That's the only way we're going to get a Stanley Cup."

My goodness, a Stanley Cup?

Even in most years the Hawks made the playoffs, it seemed like the postseason was the goal.

But now Savard is talking Stanley Cup, and it seems like more than silly talk.

As for the rest of this season, Savard says, "We want to make the playoffs, make a run at the Cup."

Even he knows it's improbable, what with the Hawks still trailing a collection of teams for the Western Conference's final playoff spot.

But more important anyway is that this season really is the start of something bigger, just as it was 50 years ago.

"Even if we don't make it," Savard said, "(the stretch run is) going to be pretty good experience for the club, for the young players."

Then if history repeats itself the next decade or so, and lightning strikes again, and it's déjà vu ..®