The Chicago Blackhawks championship run started with Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews, and symbolically, it ends with Kane and Toews.
Since March, Duncan Keith, Brent Seabrook and Andrew Shaw — the last vestiges of the supporting cast for hockey’s most dynamic duo of the 2010s — were either traded away or bowed out to injuries.
Two-time Stanley Cup-winning goalie Corey Crawford parted ways with the Hawks last fall and essentially retired in January before playing a minute for the New Jersey Devils.
Joel Quenneville, who hoisted all three Stanley Cups during that period, enters his third season as the Florida Panthers coach.
It’s fitting.
The last two links to the Hawks’ most recent three Stanley Cups — 2010, ’13 and ’15 — usher in perhaps the most significant leg of the franchise’s rebuild. After they brought in Vezina Trophy winner Marc-André Fleury, top defenseman Seth Jones and two-time Cup winner Tyler Johnson, the hockey world is taking the Hawks seriously again.
Whatever Toews and Kane, who started their journey together in 2007-08, can build with an overhauled roster, it will be a new creation.
The transition from old faces to new faces isn’t lost on either of them.
“Yeah, it’s weird,” Toews said at the start of training camp. “I mean, I’ve been in the room with guys like Seabs and Duncs since the start of my career. Now … you look around and you see pictures on the wall of those two guys hoisting the Stanley Cups.
“You just didn’t think it would change this soon this fast. I owe a ton of my success as a player to those two guys, to Shawzie, to (Patrick) Sharp. Go down the list of guys that aren’t part of this group anymore, but at the same time you’ve got to do what you always do. It’s just about the next game and about the next day.
“But it’s a fresh start in a lot of ways, so it’ll be a lot of fun.”
Kane took a view of the new landscape from Toews’ perspective.
“After a year off, you’re coming into a new team — like I even feel like it’s a brand-new team, a lot of different faces,” he said. “It feels different for sure, especially this year.
“Even last year, Duncs was here and Seabs was around. This year, without those two guys who are such good players, but also their voice carries a lot of weight in the locker room. You’d wake up and be excited to see Seabrook at the rink, just to hear what he had to say. His stupid little jokes all the time. Definitely miss that.
“But you stay in touch with those guys and now it’s a new team. It seems like the way the team is built this year, it can do some special things.”
Alex DeBrincat sees it too.
“From last year we’re in a rebuild or whatever it was, and coming into this year, I think we have a good team and can do something special with these guys,” DeBrincat said.
It starts with Fleury, a three-time Cup winner with the Pittsburgh Penguins.
Johnson was a member of the Tampa Bay Lightning team that won back-to-back championships the last two seasons.
Jones is a former All-Star who has been a member of five playoff teams with the Columbus Blue Jackets and Nashville Predators.
To become “special,” however, it will require more.
Young newcomers such as Lukas Reichel and Henrik Borgström need to look like NHL players.
The players who have grown up in the system — or were recently added to it — who already look like NHL players need to do more than just stick on a roster. They need to star.
Will that be Alex Nylander, Philipp Kurashev or Adam Gaudette? Riley Stillman or Wyatt Kalynuk?
It wouldn’t hurt to have a complete surprise or two. This season’s Brandon Hagel.
Holdovers from the young nucleus — Kirby Dach, DeBrincat and Hagel — have to step into bigger roles on and off the ice and become the next Shaw, Seabrook or Keith, but each in his own way.
Dach’s maturation process was stunted last season by his recovery from wrist surgery.
DeBrincat held up his end on the ice, finishing third in the league in goals (32), but he has recognized there’s room to expand his influence.
“There’s a lot of guys in the locker room that are still good leaders,” DeBrincat said. “We have that, but I’ve been on the team for a while now. Maybe I’ll voice my opinion a little bit more and be a leader on the ice, too, with my play.”
Toews is still the captain, and Kane will wear the “A” as an alternate captain. DeBrincat and Connor Murphy also wore the letter at various times last season.
Still, the transfer of leadership is in progress.
Coach Jeremy Colliton said the honor of wearing the other “A” remains up for grabs.
“Typically, you kind of see how camp goes, who’s going to be on the team,” he said. “You let the team dynamics sort of play out. Yeah, you have an idea who it could be potentially doing it.”
However, the responsibility for elevating the Hawks doesn’t fall on only one group of players. It falls on the old blood and new blood.
It’s a collective, and Hawks management and coaches will be judged by the assemblage of players they’ve picked for the task.
The group will rise — or not — based on its identity, whatever that becomes.
Toews’ and Kane’s health problems are reminders that even their roles in fashioning the new Hawks are finite.
Toews missed last season with a stress condition and recovery from COVID-19. Kane has been dealing with an injury, the culmination of playing since age 6, but he didn’t want to go into details.
“Throughout the summer you have your worries and whatnot,” he said. “It’s something that’s not completely healed, but I’m optimistic with where I’m going.”
It underscores why this new supporting cast is so crucial.
Barring an extension, Toews and Kane become unrestricted free agents in 2023. They have the power to decide if the Hawks are headed in the right direction.
Perhaps that was reason enough for Stan Bowman to kick the rebuild into higher gear with several blockbuster moves this summer. If Toews and Kane have the makings of a new powerhouse, it had better come together quickly.
Optimism in NHL locker rooms is never in short supply in September, but at this camp, it feels different.
“Just talking to (the players), the excitement they have about the opportunity we have to be competitive,” Colliton said. “Whether it’s the new players coming in or just Toews is back, those are all positives.
“We’re going to try to build off that energy and feed off that energy.”
Energy and competitiveness.
That sounds like the legacy of Keith, Seabrook and Shaw.
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