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Chicago and Los Angeles are the NHL Benchmarks

If an NHL team wants to be taken seriously as a contender for the Stanley Cup, the best way for a general manager to evaluate his team’s chances is to pay close attention to his team’s games with the Chicago Blackhawks and Los Angeles Kings.

Chicago and Los Angeles are the NHL Benchmarks

The Kings and Blackhawks have won four of the last five Stanley Cups and as long as their current rosters remain intact, there is no reason to believe that they can’t win a few more before this decade is over.

These two teams have established a position for themselves like Montreal and Detroit did in the 1950s, Montreal and Toronto did in the 1960s, and the New York Islanders and Edmonton Oilers did in the 1980s.

At the beginning of the decade, it seemed that Pittsburgh with its nucleus of the two players who could be regarded as the best in the league, Sidney Crosby, and Evgeni Malkin, were in position to dominate the coming decade, especially after they won what many fans believed would be the first of many Stanley Cups in 2009.

But somehow the Penguins have faded to become a team of stars instead of a championship dynasty, and the Blackhawks and Kings have stepped into the breach.

Yet for decades, the two franchises were non-contenders and were on horrible losing streaks.

Before winning the Cup in 2010, the Blackhawks were holding the longest streak of any franchise without winning the trophy, 49 years since 1961.

Their successors were none other than the Kings, tied with the St. Louis Blues and Toronto Maple Leafs without a championship since their inception in 1967.  (Currently, these two teams have the distinction of being the NHL’s longest losers.)

The current Blackhawks, with its core of Jonathan Toews, Patrick Kane, Patrick Sharp, Marion Hossa, Duncan Keith, Brent Seabrook and Corey Crawford in goal have already surpassed the glory days of Bobby Hull, Stan Mikita, Pierre Pilote, and netminder Glenn Hall during the 1960s.

Before this group was assembled, the Blackhawks went through a period when drawing a half-full arena was the average crowd.

Now, if the professional Chicago teams were to be ranked about who was the best in the city, the Blackhawks would top the Bulls, Bears, White Sox, and Cubs.

The Kings have fashioned their own core of champions based around the stingiest goaltender in the NHL, Jonathan Quick.  It includes Drew Doughty, Dustin Brown, Anze Kopitar, Mike Richards, and Jeff Carter.

They also currently top the local competition of the Lakers, Clippers, Dodgers, and Angels and their own rivals, the Ducks.

Now in some ways, it is unfortunate that the Kings and Blackhawks are in the same conference because a Kings-Blackhawks playoff match-up is probably when the Stanley Cup will be really decided.

Like in the NFL during the Steelers-Raiders era or the Cowboys-49’ers era, the current Blackhawks-Kings rivalry makes the Stanley Cup Final somewhat anti-climatic.

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