Compared to other NHL organizations, the highs and lows of the Blackhawks’ 100-year history uniquely correlate with the passage of their ownership through different hands.
Although hockey fans take pride in the intensity of the spotlight on players and the relative lack of a spotlight on owners — the Stanley Cup is the only of the Big Four trophies handed first to the team captain, not the owner — it has been a bit different in Chicago.
There was chaos under Frederic McLaughlin, success under Arthur Wirtz, ineptitude under Bill Wirtz and glory under Rocky Wirtz.
But it was actually someone else altogether — Huntington Hardwick — who received the initial ownership of the NHL’s Chicago franchise 100 years ago on May 15, 1926.
Hardwick, a Bostonian, owned the team for less than a month before selling it to a group of Chicago businessmen, including McLaughlin. He paid $12,000 for the not-yet-named Hawks and sold them for $120,000, having spent $100,000 in between to buy a full roster of players from a team in Portland, Oregon.
Today, the Hawks are valued at approximately $2.8 billion (according to Forbes), seventh-highest in the NHL. They also have the sixth-most wins all-time (2,943), although looking at that stat from a different angle, they’re the only Original Six team with a losing record all-time.
As the franchise enters its second century, here’s a look back at its first:
McLaughlin’s Hawks
The Hawks’ second owner, an army major who had inherited a fortune from his father’s coffee business, soon gave the Hawks their name, inspired by the nickname of his army unit during World War I — a nickname that came from Sauk general Black Hawk.
McLaughlin’s more famous wife, actress and dancer Irene Castle, designed the original “Indian head” logo. It has since managed to outlast most other Native American-inspired sports logos, albeit not without controversy.
This was a Wild West era for the fledgling NHL, and the Hawks under McLaughlin were equally disorganized, churning through 13 head coaches in 18 years before McLaughlin died in 1944. One coach, Godfrey Matheson, got the job after a chance meeting with McLaughlin on a train, then lasted only two games during the 1932-33 season before getting fired.
McLaughlin was known for his erratic, hot-headed personality and a micromanaging ownership style that almost certainly wouldn’t have jibed with modern professional sports.
The Hawks had winning records in only six of those 18 seasons, but in a league with so few teams, the margin between subpar and best wasn’t large.
The team claimed its first Stanley Cup in 1934 after posting a good-but-not-great 20-17-11 record in the regular season, then dispatching the Canadiens, the now-defunct Montreal Maroons and the Red Wings in the playoffs.
Diminutive forward Mush March, one of the most iconic Hawks players of the era, scored the Cup-winning goal in double overtime at Chicago Stadium, igniting a cathartic celebration.
“I don’t think we got out of the Stadium until after 2 a.m.,” March told the Sun-Times later in life.
The Hawks claimed their second Cup in 1938 in a more bizarre fashion. They went 14-25-9 in the regular season but benefitted from a playoff system that qualified six of eight teams and had an advantageous bracket format.
Facing a Maple Leafs team in the Cup Final that had a much better record, the Hawks allegedly pulled Leafs reserve goaltender Alfie Moore out of a pub to start Game 1 because their own starting goalie, Mike Karakas, had broken his toe. A drunken Moore led the Hawks to an unlikely victory, and they went on to win the series 3-1 after Karakas returned to the net.
That made Karakas, a Minnesota native, not only the first American-born and -trained goalie to play in the NHL, but also the first to win the Cup. That was a theme of the early Hawks under McLaughlin, who prioritized American-born players in an era dominated by Canadians.
The 1938 Hawks featured eight Americans, headlined by Karakas and fellow Minnesota natives Doc Romnes and Cully Dahlstrom — the most on any Cup-winning team until the 2016 Penguins. And captain Johnny Gottselig was just the second Russian-born player in NHL history (and the first to win a Cup).
Arthur Wirtz’s Hawks
McLaughlin’s death led to the Hawks being sold to a syndicate group led by James Norris, who also owned the Red Wings and yielded significant financial influence over the Rangers and Bruins.
Norris’ conflicts of interest — and reported relative lack of interest in the Hawks — ushered in a stretch of irrelevance in which the Hawks made the playoffs only twice in 12 years, despite the league’s generous playoff format.
Attendance fell to just 4,000 per game in 1953, prompting rumors of relocation to St. Louis. But the franchise managed to stay afloat until its fortunes turned in 1959, led by an up-and-coming young core of forwards Bobby Hull and Stan Mikita, defenseman Pierre Pilote and goalie Glenn Hall — all future Hockey Hall of Famers.
By then, former Wings minority owner Arthur Wirtz — a 6-4, 340-pound behemoth of a man known for his shrewd business acumen and intimidating personality — had gained control of the team, bringing the Hawks under the Wirtz family umbrella.
Arthur Wirtz had built an empire by gobbling up real estate during the Great Depression, and he viewed sports as a means to an end — the end being profit — rather than a passion project.
For the Hawks, losses to the Canadiens in the 1959 and 1960 semifinals built anticipation for a 1961 breakthrough, when they finally bested the Canadiens and Wings to claim their third Cup. After a snowstorm briefly stranded the team in Detroit, it returned to hear Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley call the Hawks “the greatest hockey team ever put together any place in this world.”
The title instantly turned the four young stars into celebrities. At the All-Star Game at Chicago Stadium that preceded the following season, the crowd’s roar for them was unforgettable, as Hall recalled decades later.
“It was just an explosion,” Hall said. “The fans had wanted a championship for such a long time. It was so emotional, it was almost embarrassing. It was something I’ll never forget.”
Of course, fans ended up waiting even longer for another championship. That elite core’s failure to win again stands out as one key reason the Hawks, despite the fruits of their 2010s dynasty, remain tied with the Bruins in Cups won (six) and trail far behind the Canadiens (24), Leafs (13) and Wings (11).
That core’s failure wasn’t for a lack of trying. The 1961 season marked the first of 16 consecutive seasons in which the Hawks had a winning record, as well as the third of 38 times they made the playoffs in 39 years (again taking advantage of a generous playoff format).
They reached the Cup Final in 1965, 1971 and 1973 but got squashed by the Canadiens each time. They also squandered dominant regular seasons with semifinal losses in 1967, 1970, 1972 and 1974. Billy Reay, who remains the winningest coach in franchise history, never added a Cup to his coaching résumé.
The Hawks did claim the Prince of Wales Trophy in 1967 as regular-season champions, which was a bigger deal in that era — especially because the Hawks had never won it before.
“If we missed the title before because it wasn’t a whole team, then you’ve got to give Billy [Reay] the credit for making it one,” acclaimed general manager Tommy Ivan said. “For me, it is a great personal satisfaction, greater than anything I’ve had in hockey.”
Nevertheless, the 1971 Final was particularly painful. The Hawks won Games 1, 2 and 5 at home — pulling within one more win of a Cup — before falling by one goal in Games 6 and 7. An already planned parade route had to be scrapped.
“I even had two cases of champagne downstairs,” future Hawks owner Bill Wirtz, Arthur’s son, said decades later. “I went down there, walked over to [Canadiens president] David Molson and said, ‘Here, you take our champagne and celebrate.’ ”
By that 1971 series, the Hawks’ core had evolved, with forwards Pit Martin and Jim Pappin, defenseman Keith Magnuson and goalie Tony Esposito joining Hull and Mikita as franchise icons. But after Hull’s leap to the start-up World Hockey Association in 1972, the group’s championship potential gradually faded.
Bill Wirtz’s Hawks
Arthur Wirtz’s death in 1983 officially passed the ownership to Bill, who hadn’t yet become despised by Hawks fans but soon would.
First, though, came one more upswing in the early 1990s, fueled by forwards Jeremy Roenick, Denis Savard and Steve Larmer, defensemen Chris Chelios and Doug Wilson and goalie Eddie Belfour.
Under controversial iron-fist coach Mike Keenan, the Hawks made an underdog run to the Cup Final in 1992 but were swept by the Penguins in four narrow defeats. They also wasted stronger regular seasons with first-round exits in 1991 and 1993.
“I don’t know if I’ll ever get back here,” Roenick said after the 1992 sweep. “I’ll tell you this: I’m going to bust my butt to get back here. I got a taste, and that taste won’t go away.”
He ultimately never did get back to that stage, neither with the Hawks nor after his 1996 trade to the Phoenix Coyotes amid contentious contract negotiations — following a yearslong public feud with Wirtz.
The Roenick trade was the final nail in the coffin of that contention window for the Hawks. In 1998, they missed the playoffs for the first time in decades and made it only once more until 2009.
But it was far from the only ill-advised trade of the era, cementing fans’ detest of Keenan, “Dollar Bill” Wirtz and on-again, off-again GM and coach Bob Pulford.
Perhaps the most egregious example was the Hawks’ August 1992 trade of backup goalie Dominik Hasek to the Sabres, for whom Hasek developed into arguably the greatest goalie in history. At the time, the Sun-Times reported that the Hawks “privately question [Hasek’s] heart and desire.” That assessment proved incredibly inaccurate.
Even more than the trades, Bill Wirtz’s refusal to televise home games locally throughout his tenure became his defining legacy. There’s a reason it’s a topic still brought up frequently (with disdain) by fans today.
His unwillingness to spend enough to bring in notable free agents — or often to keep his own — added another layer to his legacy.
The departure of late-1990s star forward Tony Amonte in 2002, also to the Coyotes, after a lowball offer of $5.4 million represented one part of a pattern. Wirtz openly mocked Amonte’s asking price in an ensuing interview, which the Sun-Times called no surprise “since talk is cheaper than actually signing star players.”
Retired franchise legends such as Mikita were alienated under Bill Wirtz, too, and the lack of exposure, culture and competitiveness sent the Hawks into a steady downward spiral.
By 2004, ESPN reported — in their infamous declaration of the Hawks as the worst franchise in North American pro sports — the number of season-ticket holders had fallen to around 5,000. By 2007, it had dipped to 3,400.
“The free fall of the Hawks is nothing short of tragic, recalling how they warmed the city’s bones for decades,” a Sun-Times columnist wrote in 2004.
“The problem is Wirtz and only Wirtz, an uncommonly stubborn man with no regard for entertainment value, changing times, generational links, the necessity of putting home games on TV and the importance of spending enough money on major players to create a buzz.
“Legend has it that once, at a front-office meeting, Wirtz listened to a new GM present a three-year plan for a championship. After the meeting, Wirtz said, ‘Don’t you be thinking about winning any Stanley Cups. They’re too expensive.’”
Rocky Wirtz’s Hawks
Bill Wirtz’s death in September 2007 finally ended the franchise’s era of dysfunction and passed ownership to Rocky Wirtz, who swiftly orchestrated its renaissance.
Most observers initially assumed Rocky Wirtz’s brother, Peter, would inherit the Hawks because he had worked for the team under Bill while Rocky had not. That meant Rocky took over with little institutional knowledge, adding to his shock when he saw the degree of disarray.
“I didn’t think they’d lost as much money as they had,” Rocky Wirtz said in 2008. ‘‘We had to make payroll, and two weeks after my dad’s passing, we had gone through our season-ticket money.”
He later disclosed that the Hawks had operated at a roughly $30 million annual loss. His response was to pour investment into all areas of the team, further worsening the short-term financial situation but realizing it would pay off in the long run.
“You sell your way out,” he said. “You have to mention your top line, and with the Blackhawks, that’s ticket sales. And we can’t have ticket sales here unless we have a good product.”
All home games were televised by 2008-09, broadcast equipment was upgraded, Pat Foley returned as play-by-play voice after two years of banishment and radio broadcasts moved to WGN.
Wirtz also upgraded the Hawks’ charter flights, charter buses, hotels, catering and so forth from among the worst in the league to among the best and reconciled with alienated former players.
In the front office, John McDonough was hired away from the Cubs to become the Hawks’ new president in a bold coup. While McDonough’s name has since been stained permanently by his failure to protect Kyle Beach from sexual assault in 2010 (as well as to protect Brad Aldrich’s later assault victims), McDonough’s marketing and sales campaigns were undeniable smash hits.
And on the ice, Wirtz pushed the Hawks’ player payroll up to the NHL salary cap. He made two enormous splashes by signing defenseman Brian Campbell to the richest contract in team history ($57.1 million) in 2008, then signing forward Marian Hossa to an even-richer contract in 2009.
“Nothing was too expensive,” broadcaster Eddie Olcyzk told the Sun-Times after Wirtz died in 2023. “He wanted to be the best. From the people in the front office to just the way they conducted business, it changed dramatically.”
It turned out the Hawks already had the foundation of a new elite core forming in forwards Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews, defensemen Duncan Keith, Brent Seabrook and Niklas Hjalmarsson and goalie Corey Crawford, all of whom the team had drafted during the final four years of Bill Wirtz’s reign.
The Hawks’ ascension proved satisfyingly linear. They earned a mere 26 regular-season wins in 2005-06, 31 in 2006-07, 40 in 2007-08 (narrowly missing the playoffs), 46 in 2008-09 (advancing to the conference final for the first time since 1995) and 52 in 2009-10 (eventually claiming their first Stanley Cup since 1961).
That began the dynasty era, the details of which all but the youngest Hawks fans should still remember vividly: Additional Cup wins in 2013 and 2015 and nine straight playoff appearances, with an impressive record of 414-206-84 over that span.
One Hart Trophy for Kane. Two Norris Trophies for Keith. One Selke Trophy for Toews. Two Conn Smythe Trophies, one for Kane and one for Keith. Coach Joel Quenneville didn’t quite pass Reay for the title of winningest Hawks coach, but he is the only NHL coach so far to win three Cups in the 21st century.
“With a roster of world-class players as a foundation, the Hawks have separated themselves from the rest of the pack in the NHL with an uncanny knack for willing themselves to victory,” a Sun-Times columnist wrote in 2015.
The Hawks’ Game 6 win over the Lightning that year allowed them to hoist the Cup at home — in front of 22,424 fans at the United Center — for the first time since 1938.
“This is incredible,” Toews said on the ice that night. “Let’s stay here all night. There’s nowhere else we want to be.”
The dynasty era produced countless unforgettable moments. First and foremost, there were the Cup-winning goals: Kane’s phantom puck in Philadelphia in Game 6 in 2010 that nobody but him saw go in the net, and Bryan Bickell and Dave Bolland’s famous goals 17 seconds apart in Game 6 in Boston in 2013 to flip a late deficit into a championship.
There were other crucial goals en route to those Cups, such as Kane’s game-tying shorthanded goal with 13.6 seconds left in Game 5 against the Predators in 2010, followed by Hossa’s overtime winner out of the penalty box.
There was Seabrook’s overtime winner in Game 7 against the Wings in 2013, completing the Hawks’ comeback from a 3-1 series deficit mere weeks after running away with the Presidents’ Trophy.
There were the four winners in double- or triple-overtime during the run to the 2015 Cup Final: Keith in Game 1 and Seabrook in Game 4 against the Predators, then Marcus Kruger in Game 2 and Antoine Vermette in Game 4 against the Ducks.
And there were plenty more iconic moments that didn’t count on the scoreboard (such as Andrew Shaw’s negated head-butt goal in the 2015 Ducks series) but did matter in fans’ hearts (such as Seabrook’s reassuring Toews in the penalty box during the 2013 Wings series) or mattered because they didn’t involve the scoreboard (such as beloved backup goalie Scott Darling’s heroics during the 2015 Predators series).
“I don’t know if there’s one moment on the ice [that stands out],” Toews said when leaving the Hawks in 2023. “There are just so many, really. And I think that just shows how spoiled we were over the years.
“When people are thanking you for the moments you created, the moments people in Chicago will remember, you’re kind of embarrassed at first. But then it’s a reminder … it’s more than a game. When I was younger — and throughout my career — you keep finding that inspiration to go out there and do your best. You hope you inspire someone to do the same and find their best within themselves, too. When you hear [you did that], there’s no bigger compliment, really.”
The Hawks’ most recent decade has been more turbulent, headlined by the abrupt decline of the championship core, the aforementioned sexual assault scandal that rocked the franchise in 2021 and the painfully slow rebuild over the last four years.
Believe it or not, the team now sports a cumulative losing record in the 19 years since Bill Wirtz’s death. In other words, they’ve lost more games in recent years than they won during the Cup years.
It’s worth noting, though, that most Hawks fans would probably still take that trade-off, considering the heights they reached. It’s part of the natural cycle of competitiveness in a league with a hard salary cap.
“You’ve got to accept that sometimes [when] you invest heavily into a generation, the next generation is going to suffer for it,” recent former Hawks forward Jason Dickinson said in April.
“Is it worth it for the fan base to have a group that just goes out there and plays good hockey forever? Or do you want to see some years of exceptional games and fantastic runs that really create the memories and legacy of an organization?”
The Hawks hope to begin their second 100 years by entering another championship window soon. They have amassed one of the youngest rosters in NHL history — McLaughlin would be proud of the number of Americans on it — as well as the league’s best prospect pool.
Danny Wirtz, now three years into his ownership, said in April their “intention is to be competing and winning Stanley Cups” in the near future, even though they “can’t race to that conclusion until we do all those right things.”
But there’s a long, steep slope to climb to get there.
