There's nothing minor league about the champion Wolves
While the Chicago Wolves might be a minor league team, this is a big league organization from top to bottom led by an owner, a general manager and a coach who all should be in the National Hockey League.
The Wolves won their fourth championship Tuesday night, capturing the American Hockey League's Calder Cup, and what a party it was at an electric Allstate Arena, where a crowd of almost 10,000 sounded twice that loud. For anyone that never got the chance to experience hockey at Chicago Stadium, a rocking Allstate Arena is as close as it gets, smoke and all.
The Wolves ooze success and it all begins with owners Don Levin and Buddy Meyers, who do everything first class. Wolves players rave about how they are treated, from travel to the spectacular training facility in Hoffman Estates that puts the Edge in Bensenville, where the Blackhawks practice, to shame.
In Kevin Cheveldayoff, the Wolves have a general manager who has demonstrated over and over how to build championship teams. Cheveldayoff did it from scratch when the Wolves were an independent franchise, and he continues to do it while affiliated with the Atlanta Thrashers.
Cheveldayoff deserves an NHL job somewhere. He nearly landed the GM gig with the Phoenix Coyotes last summer, and would have been a great fit.
John Anderson can flat out coach hockey. He now has four titles with the Wolves and another with the Quad City Mallards before arriving in Rosemont. Unfortunately, Anderson never even gets a sniff when it comes to job openings in the NHL, which is a shame for him, but a plus for the Wolves.
Heck, the Thrashers need a coach right now and you'd think Atlanta GM Don Waddell would consider the man who is developing many of his top prospects in such a fine way.
Area hockey fans should be saluting the Wolves today and giving them a big thanks. Why? Because while the Hawks were embarrassing themselves for much of the last decade with inept ownership, doing their best to kill hockey in Chicago, there was always the entertaining, affordable and highly successful Wolves to go watch.
Minor league? Only on paper.
Remembering Hasek: The next stop for Dominik Hasek, who retired from the Detroit Red Wings this week, is the Hall of Fame.
One can't help but wonder how Hawks history might have changed had they kept Hasek and not traded him to Buffalo following the 1991-92 season.
Mike Keenan, then the GM, had no choice but to deal Hasek, who threatened to return to the Czech Republic if he wasn't traded. Ed Belfour had just won 43 games, the Calder Trophy and Vezina Trophy en route to leading the Hawks to the Stanley Cup Finals, so what was Keenan going to do? Not trade Belfour, that's for sure.
Besides, Hasek gave no indications of the greatness to come. The Sabres even left him unprotected in the expansion draft shortly after acquiring him.
The only way Hasek could have stayed and developed here would have been if Keenan got his way and traded Belfour, Steve Smith, Steve Larmer, draft picks and cash to Quebec in 1991 for the opportunity to draft Eric Lindros.
Keenan actually made the deal that June draft day, but the late Bill Wirtz refused to go along because of the cash involved, believed to be $15 million.
Time for the hardware: It would be an upset of major proportions if Patrick Kane doesn't win the Calder Trophy as rookie of the year tonight in Toronto.
It would be only fitting if Kane and Jonathan Toews finish 1-2 in voting by the Professional Hockey Writers Association. With all due respect to Washington's Nicklas Backstrom, the third finalist, Kane and Toews basically carried the Hawks for much of last season as teen-agers.