Blackhawks Week That Was and Will Be, 1/31: Legacies

Photo by Bill Smith/NHLI via Getty ImagesThere were countless times on Monday when my mind went to Stan Mikita.

With Bobby Hull dying on Monday, the two pillars of the Blackhawks teams from the 1960s are both gone from here now but will remain immortalized by the statue outside the United Center and by their names and numbers hanging from the rafters.

As the discussion hovered around Hull’s horrendous off-ice behavior, I kept thinking about Mikita, because Mikita was — and will forever be — just about the epitome of everything you’d hope one of your sports heroes would be.

Mikita was every bit of Hull’s equal on the ice and not worth any comparison off of it. Mikita came from humble beginnings…