Few teams in the modern-day NHL have managed to achieve the kind of success that the Chicago Blackhawks did from 2009 to 2017.
Under the direction of head coach Joel Quenneville, with leaders like Jonathan Toews and Duncan Keith and supporting cast members like Patrick Kane, Marian Hossa, and Corey Crawford, they looked to be absolutely unstoppable. Three Stanley Cups from 2010 to 2015 was a shocking level of elite performance compared to the relative power of the Western Conference.
This last year, though, the Blackhawks finally started to fall apart. Maybe it was the exhaustion from all the deep postseason runs they’d made, and maybe it was the lack of cap space to add quality pieces as their stars started to age.