CHICAGO — Seth Jones was beaming at his stall, his face bathed in the blue light of the futuristic locker dividers in the Chicago Cubs’ Star Trek nightclub of a clubhouse, an anachronistic room if ever there was one in a stadium that opened three months before World War I broke out. Jones was chirping his mom’s skating ability, reflecting on the bevy of Chicago Blackhawks babies that have been born this season and just generally soaking in the undeniably cool atmosphere of Wrigley Field on the eve of the Winter Classic.
Then came an actual hockey question, and Jones’ face fell immediately, back into that somber look and thousand-yard stare we’ve seen from so many players after so many games this season, that mix of frustration and futility, all haggard and hopeless.
It’s fun to skate with family. It’s fun to play hockey outside. It’s fun to be in a Winter Classic.
But it’s not terribly fun to be a Chicago Blackhawk — or a Blackhawks fan, for that matter — these days. And eight minutes into Tuesday’s Winter Classic, with two St. Louis Blues power-play goals already on the famous center-field scoreboard, the festive atmosphere was already gone. It was just another hockey game to endure, another step on the slow and painful trudge to 82.
Winter Classic stuns in new photo 📸 pic.twitter.com/is7CTVnlEu
— Chicago Blackhawks (@NHLBlackhawks) December 31, 2024
The 6-2 loss to St. Louis was the Blackhawks’ fifth consecutive loss overall and their fifth loss in five Winter Classic appearances. It was their third straight lopsided loss, too, that three-game win streak over the New York Islanders, Washington Capitals and Seattle Kraken feeling more like a lifetime ago than a fortnight ago.
But hey, at least the Blackhawks won the uniform matchup in a landslide.
“There’s one thing Chicago knows, it’s how to celebrate sports, and our fans did not disappoint today,” a despondent captain Nick Foligno said. “That’s what makes it so damn difficult right now. It’s just embarrassing to lose 6-2 in an environment like that, at home. Our fans deserve better.”
That was a theme in the moribund postgame clubhouse, where those brilliant blue lights had been turned off, leaving it looking sad and sparse. Taylor Hall was near tears, noting how much the Blackhawks fans had been through and how they still showed up in such numbers with such excitement, only to watch the team face-plant so badly. Again. Connor Bedard sat slumped on a folding chair in front of a stall and said the Blackhawks got “dog-walked.” Again.
“Forty-thousand people out there, probably 30-plus-thousand of them our fans, and those tickets aren’t cheap,” Bedard said. “We’re obviously, in our room, disappointed with ourselves, but I feel bad for our fan base, coming out to this and we lay an egg.”
It’s all stuff we’ve heard before. It’s all stuff they’ve said before. It’s all stuff I’ve written before. There are no new developments here, no new epiphanies. The Blackhawks — as a front office and a dressing room — are putting their fans through hell right now, asking so much and giving them so little. It still costs several hundred dollars to take a family of four to the United Center. It still costs damn near $20 for a beer. It’s still exceedingly difficult for many fans to even watch the games on television. All these obstacles, all these demands, even though the Blackhawks remain a lousy product, some of it by design, some of it not.
“I’m really tired of it,” Foligno said after apologizing for casually dropping an entirely understandable and justifiable F-bomb in front of the cameras. “At some point, the fans are going to be tired of hearing it, you guys are going to be tired of hearing it, and we’re going to be tired of saying it.”
Look, the future stuff is all still there. Bedard is still going to be a great player for a long time. The prospects are going to get here. Things will get better. There might be a light at the end of the tunnel, and that light might even be the glare of the United Center lights gleaming off the silver of the Stanley Cup. This all still might work out. This is all part of Kyle Davidson’s grand plan, and the current pain has a purpose. Five or 10 years from now, fans might look back on this era of Blackhawks hockey and chuckle knowingly, all of it just another badge of honor for the fans who stayed, the fans who stuck it out. Some fans still wear their Tyler Arnason and Kyle Calder jerseys with a special sort of stubborn pride, after all.
But right now? In the moment? This is excruciating. For the Blackhawks. For their fans. For anyone in the franchise’s orbit.
This game had loomed large all season, something to look forward to, something to get excited about. This fourth straight horrid campaign has been in many ways worse than the previous three. There were no aging legends to treasure, no tank to understand, no whirlwind Bedard rookie season to paper over the rest. The Blackhawks got a lot older and presumably a lot better this past offseason but are somehow losing just as much. In the standings, they’re even worse — from 31st to 32nd.
But there was always Wrigley Field in the distance.
So, what’s there to look forward to now? For the players, a week on the beach in Cabo because only Teuvo Teräväinen got picked for the 4 Nations Face-Off? For the fans, the arrival of Oliver Moore and Sam Rinzel for a game or two at the end of the college hockey season? Is that it? Is that all they get? The Winter Classic was at least something to cling to. Now? Now it’s all stick, no carrot. Just a long, pointless slog to the finish line. Again.
Chicago’s own Billy Corgan sang — well, tried to sing, at least — shortly before puck drop about the “resolute urgency of now,” but the Blackhawks were sorely lacking in that department. The size and enthusiasm of the crowd in the face of freezing rain and biting wind are proof that the embers never fade in the city by the lake, but it’s getting harder to believe, believe that the Blackhawks’ fortunes can change, that they’re not stuck in vain.
If the Blackhawks so often play like they don’t care (that’s their own assessment, in not so many words), then why should anybody else care?
“No one’s going to feel sorry for us, no one’s going to try to help us out,” Foligno said in a familiar refrain. “We’ve got to help ourselves out. And that’s the disappointing part: It seems we crumble right now as opposed to digging in.”
The Blackhawks did respond, at least briefly, to the brutal start. They owned the second half of the first period, firing the last nine shots of the period. Hall scored on a Ryan Donato rebound for a power-play goal to cut the lead to 2-1 and it looked like we might have a game. But then the same thing happened that always happens: the better team played better, the harder-working team worked harder, and before they knew it, the Blackhawks — seemingly never the better team, seemingly never the harder-working team — were down 5-1.
“I’m really sad for the people that support us,” Hall said. “And for us in here, it’s got to be a huge wakeup call on how hard we have to play. This is what happens in the NHL. As the year goes on, they’re fighting for a playoff spot. Teams are going to come and play well. It doesn’t matter if it’s an outdoor game or a national TV game or a Tuesday in Columbus. Teams are going to play hard. We had no match for that tonight.”
Tonight. Last night. Tomorrow. The hamster wheel of hell spins on.
Different venue, same story. And for everyone involved, from those being paid to play to those paying to see them play, that story is getting awfully old.
(Top photo of Jason Dickinson: Daniel Bartel / Imagn Images)
