The blue-collar heroes

The Chicago Blackhawks are ready to rumble with the Philadelphia Flyers, hoping to end their Stanley Cup drought, writes Dan Babwin.

Blackhawks great Bobby Hull gets in the mood.

CHICAGO // Gladys Wheeler could not help it: Seeing the Blackhawks' Duncan Keith back on the ice after a puck smashed into his mouth and scattered seven teeth onto the ice brought her back to her childhood, back to the days when players kept skating after their faces were stitched up, their broken jaws wired shut. "We saw that all the time," said Wheeler, a lifelong Blackhawks fan who would not reveal her age except to say her first favourite Blackhawk was John Mariucci back in the 1940s. "They were a little nutty."

Nutty is a good word for what is happening in Chicago these days as the Blackhawks get ready to host the Philadelphia Flyers in Game 1 of the Stanley Cup finals tonight. The Blackhawks are clearly back. Back at the doorstep of a Stanley Cup championship they haven't hoisted since 1961 ? the longest drought for an Original Six team. Back after a run of futility in which the once-proud franchise became the most obscure sports team in the Windy City. And back in the hearts of the blue-collar, lunch-bucket crowd that loves a gritty hero.

People are wearing Blackhawks hats and jerseys to work. A dinosaur outside the Field Museum is sporting a jersey, and the lions outside the Art Institute of Chicago sport Blackhawk helmets. The team's banner is everywhere. Not only that, people can be heard talking about the Blackhawks and not just the codgers. On Facebook, for example, a group called Duncan Keith's Missing Teeth had some 5,000 fans this week.

Chuck Sikaras, a 56-year-old fan who's had season tickets for 34 years, said he has never been asked about the team more than he is now by people who once figured the only blue line in town was the one that's part of the El, the city's elevated train system. "It's like you have superstar status, in a way," he said. It is not just because the Blackhawks are winning, fans say, but the way they're winning. There may be no city in the United States that values toughness in its athletes as much as Chicago.

"There's a blue-collar ethic and paying the price to make the right play, people of Chicago relate to that," said Pat Foley, the Blackhawks' announcer. Mike Ditka, whose own toughness as a football player and coach made him one of the most celebrated sports figures in the city, couldn't agree more. "These guys are throwbacks to another era, they play through pain," said Ditka. "Athletes aren't real people any more and these guys are real people," he said. "They look like guys who bring a lunch bucket to work."

Stan Mikita, a Blackhawks Hall of Famer and one of the stars of the 1961 team, put it this way: "Chicago is known as a working town, these are hardworking people and they love athletes who work their butts off to accomplish something." Mikita gives credit to the team's chairman since 2007, Rocky Wirtz. "From day one it was, 'I'm with the people.' He sits in the stands," Mikita said. Fans also point to Wirtz's taking control of the team after the death of his father, William Wirtz, as the turning point for the franchise.

When Rocky Wirtz took over he set out to undo much of what his father had done. He put the team's home games on television, something his father had steadfastly refused to do. Then he set out to patch up the relationship between the team and some of the team's stars from the past, most notably Bobby Hull. And after his father's tightfisted ways with players' contracts helped earn him the nickname "Dollar Bill". Under Rocky Wirtz the team has signed ? and pays handsomely ? some of the game's brightest young stars.

"People felt estranged from the team," said Rocky Wirtz, pointing out that the number of season tickets had dwindled to just 3,400 (the United Center, the Blackhawks' home, can seat more than 20,000 for their games). "This game is a game of relationships and we had to start repairing the relationships with the fans, media, players and former players" By all accounts, he's done that. Fans have returned in droves, with the number of season ticket holders skyrocketing in just one year from 3,400 to 14,000. When they see Wirtz at the games, they cheer.

It is the same on the street, where he is treated like a conquering hero by fans, some with tears in their eyes. "They say, 'Thank you for bringing (the team) back,'" he said. "It's been kind of like finding an old friend you lost for a while." Flyers fans have endured nearly as much heartbreak as their Chicago counterparts, having gone 35 years without a Stanley Cup. The Flyers are unlikely to be pushovers, and although they may not be the Broad Street Bullies who scrapped their way to back-to-back Stanley Cup triumphs in 1974 and 1975, they are forged from the same gritty mould, and it has helped produce one of the most inspired play-off runs seen in North American sport during which they became just the third team to erase a 3-0 series deficit during their 4-3 series win over the Boston Bruins in the Eastern conference semi-final.

* AP