Led by stars like Jonathan Toews, Patrick Kane, Duncan Keith, and Brent Seabrook, the Chicago Blackhawks are a modern NHL powerhouse, as much a part of Chicago as the Willis Tower or The Bean at Millennium Park. In If These Walls Could Talk: Chicago Blackhawks , Mark Lazerus chronicles the team's rise from the dark ages of the 2000s to the golden age of the 2010s through never-before-told stories from inside the dressing room, aboard the team plane, at the players' homes, and — especially in the case of the rowdy 2009-2010 team that started it all — in countless Chicago bars. If These Walls Could Talk: Chicago Blackhawks will bring readers closer to their favorite players than ever before. It's a book Hawks fans won't want to be without. Mark Lazerus has been the Blackhawks beat writer for the Chicago Sun-Times since January 2013 and previously served as a writer and editor for the Post-Tribune in Gary, Indiana. He is a Long Island native and a graduate of Northwestern University. This is his first book.  Denis Savard played 13 seasons for the Chicago Blackhawks and was named one of the "100 Greatest Players in NHL History." He was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2000. If These Walls Could Talk: Chicago Blackhawks Stories from the Chicago Blackhawks Ice, Locker Room, and Press Box By Mark Lazerus Triumph Books LLC Copyright © 2017 Mark Lazerus All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-62937-466-6 Contents Foreword by Denis Savard, Introduction, 1. Rising from the Ashes, 2. 2009-10: Young, Dumb, and So Much Fun, 3. 2010-12: The Lost Seasons, 4. 2013: The Sprint Cup, 5. 2013-15: The Endless Slog, Epilogue, Acknowledgments, CHAPTER 1 Rising from the Ashes A New Sherriff in Town Adam Burish doesn't remember who else was in the meeting. He just remembers John McDonough. McDonough has a way of dominating the room that way — the commanding presence, the authority figure, the man in charge, an imposing man who can impose his will. Even if you've just met him, you can tell you don't want to be on his bad side. So when McDonough sat down with Burish and a couple of his teammates early during the 2007–08 season, shortly after he was brought in by new owner Rocky Wirtz to turn the Blackhawks from a bare-bones laughingstock into an actual professional organization, the conversation didn't get very far very quickly. "What can change around here? What do you guys need?" McDonough asked. To Burish, it felt like a trap. "We were like, 'Oh everything's good, John. Everything's great. Cool. The NHL! The Blackhawks! Yeah! Everything's great!" McDonough leaned in. "This is your chance. I'm not judging. You're not complaining. You're not bitching. What do you guys need? Because we're going to get it for you. All of it." The players looked around at each other nervously for a moment, their silence deafening. Finally, it all came spilling out, like kindergartners who were just asked what they wanted at the candy store, their voices overlapping as they ran off a wish list they had been privately building among themselves for years: "We need a new plane! We need better food! We need food after games! We need food before practices! We need a real practice rink!" Coming from the Cubs, a team that had had its share of on-field misery but that had just come off a Central Division championship, McDonough couldn't believe what he was hearing. Here were professional athletes, making millions of dollars, and they had no food to eat in the dressing room after killing themselves for 60 minutes on a game night. And once they got on the plane, they got a brick of mac-and-cheese and a cold ham sandwich. They didn't have enough sticks to go around some days. They didn't have T-shirts or hats to wear back home, or while talking on camera to reporters. The Chicago Blackhawks weren't deemed the worst franchise in professional sports by ESPN in 2004 for nothing. McDonough soon visited the team at the Edge Ice Arena in suburban Bensenville, looked at the cramped quarters and minor-league environment, and shook his head. "This is all going to be gone," McDonough told his players. "This is all going to change. We're not going to be in something like this for long." For the Blackhawks players, after years of being told "no," of being told to shut up and keep your head down and be grateful you're in the NHL at all, it was jarring to be told "yes" over and over and over again. It was motivating, too. It was also kind of terrifying. That's part of the genius of McDonough. "All of a sudden, as players, we're all thinking the same thing," Burish recalls. " Holy shit. We've got to play good now. " From his North Side office, McDonough didn't truly know how bad things were on the West Side. And frankly, he didn't want to know. Even with ownership in transition, McDonough felt secure and happy with the Cubs. The team was winning, the fan base was enormous, the reach was global, and business was booming. As a lifelo