The game of hockey, like all sports, is filled with heroes. Most of the time, it is the superstars who have a reputation for coming up clutch. However, we are here to talk about the heroic performances that seem to come from nowhere. An unlikely hero can step up and chip in with a massive, Stanley Cup Playoff series-clinching goal, or maybe it is a season-long performance, the likes of which will never be seen again. These unlikely heroes become a part of hockey history. Today, we bring you our Last Word On Hockey summer series, as we look at the Chicago Blackhawks Unlikely Heroes.
Credit Image: © John J. Kim/Chicago Tribune via ZUMA Press Wire
Chicago Blackhawks Unlikely Heroes
The Criteria
Some wonder what makes an unlikely hero. It can be a player who comes with a massive improvement out of nowhere. An unlikely hero can step up and chip in with a massive goal or a goaltender shutout that wasn’t expected. It can also be a player who steps up and has a season to remember. An unlikely hero can be a player who’s a youngster that gives a breakthrough performance. It can also be a star player that gives one last flash of greatness.
The Checking Centre Who Won the Blackhawks a Cup in 17 Seconds
When the Chicago Blackhawks skated out for Game 6 of the 2013 Stanley Cup Final against the Boston Bruins, trailing the series 3-2 and trailing the game itself in the final minutes, nobody expected the deciding goal to come off the stick of Dave Bolland. Chicago’s roster that season was loaded with stars. It had Jonathan Toews, Patrick Kane, Duncan Keith, Marian Hossa. These are the names built for signature moments. Bolland was something else. He was a gritty, defence-first checking centre known around the league as one of the best checkers and faceoff men in the game, not a finisher anyone circled for a Cup-winning highlight.
Bolland Background
Bolland’s path to that ice was built on reliability rather than flash. Chicago drafted him in the second round, 32nd overall, in 2004, out of the OHL’s London Knights, where he’d helped win a Memorial Cup. By the time he reached the NHL full-time, Bolland had carved out a role as the Blackhawks’ shutdown centre, sent out to neutralize the other team’s top line. He’d already contributed to Chicago’s 2010 championship in that same defensive role. Coaches trusted him in the defensive zone and on critical faceoffs. Conversely, nobody was drawing up plays to get him the puck in the slot. He was a trusted, unglamorous piece of a team otherwise defined by its offensive talent.
The Bolland Moment
With Chicago down 2-1 in Game 6 and its season on the line, the Blackhawks pulled goaltender Corey Crawford for an extra attacker. Bryan Bickell tied the game with 1:16 remaining, finishing a scramble started by Toews and Keith. Seventeen seconds later, barely enough time to catch a breath, Bolland stood in front of the net when Johnny Oduya’s shot deflected off Michael Frolik, hit the post, and landed on his stick. Bolland buried the rebound, and the Blackhawks had gone from trailing to Stanley Cup champions in the span of a single shift, still the fastest come-from-behind, Cup-clinching sequence in NHL history. The checking centre had done it.
The Checking Center: His Aftermath
Bolland’s goal secured Chicago’s second Stanley Cup in four years and cemented his own unlikely place in franchise lore. He’s the answer to a trivia question, much like Fedotenko’s in Tampa.
Who actually scored the Cup-winner in “17 Seconds“? It wasn’t Kane, Toews, or Hossa, as one might expect. Rather, it was the depth centre Chicago fans knew. No team had previously clinched a title in regulation after trailing inside the final two minutes.
The ending to his time in Chicago came almost immediately. The Blackhawks traded him to Toronto less than a week later in a salary cap-driven shuffle. His career from there was marked by injury and diminishing returns. He played his final NHL game in December 2015. None of that diminished what happened in Boston that June night. For a franchise remembered for its dynasty in the Toews-Kane era, the goal that clinched its second title belonged to the guy nobody was watching.
Honourable Mention: Antoine Vermette (2015)
If Bolland showed Chicago’s second Cup could turn on a defensive specialist’s rebound, Antoine Vermette showed the third could turn on a trade-deadline afterthought. Acquired from Arizona in February 2015 for a first-round pick, Vermette went scoreless in his first 19 games as a Blackhawk and was a healthy scratch three times in the early playoff rounds. Then, in Game 4 of the Western Conference Final against Anaheim, he buried a double-overtime winner to even the series at 2-2, jump-starting Chicago’s run to the Final.
Moreover, he wasn’t finished at that point. Later, against the Tampa Bay Lightning in the Cup Final, Vermette scored the game-winning goals in both Games 1 and 5, the latter putting Chicago one win from the championship. A player benched for underperforming became, by June, the Blackhawks’ most clutch scorer, vindicating a trade that had looked like a mistake and proving, once again, that playoff heroes rarely arrive announced.
Main Photo Credit: David Banks-USA TODAY Sports
