The Tribune does some digging into where Patrick Kane's Stanley Cup-clinching goal may have gone. more ›

It may be baseball season, but it's time to start looking ahead to basketball and hockey playoffs after the Bulls clinched the top seed in the East and the Blackhawks nearly wrapped up their spot in the playoffs Friday night. more ›

Prior to the Blackhawks 5-0 handling of the New York Islanders last night, the team took the time out to honor the 1960-61 team that was the last one to win the Stanley Cup prior to last season. Stan Mikita and Bobby Hull — now team ambassadors — were in attendance, as were Hall of Fame goalie Glenn Hall, Pierre Pilote, Ab McDonald, Wayne Hicks, Bill Hay and Eric Nesterenko (also known as Rob Lowe's father in Youngblood). more ›

Murphy's Law states that what can go wrong, will go wrong. The law of gravity states that what goes up must come down. Not to sound too much like Marty McFly, but it must get pretty heavy in Chicago as the Blackhawks can't seem to get out of this injury plagued funk, maintaining a healthy trend of injuries heading into 2011. more ›

The Blackhawks Stanley Cup title wasn't like the '85 Bears winning Super Bowl XX, or the Jordan-era Bulls. The latter was more a sense of inevitability, while the former had the talent to win three straight titles but only won one. When the Blackhawks kicked off the 2009-10 season, they knew from owner Rocky Wirtz to the last man on the bench that the salary cap issues they would have to answer in the offseason meant that it was Stanley Cup or bust. more ›

Blackhawks 5, Blue Jackets 2: Patrick Sharp scored two second period goals and set an individual team record with 13 shots on goal as the Blackhawks, playing without Patrick Kane, easily outpaced Columbus. more ›

UPDATE: The Blackhawks have reached their decision and have bid adieu to Antti Niemi, officially signing Marty Turco to a one-year deal. more ›

While the Chicago Blackhawks won the Stanley Cup this past season, accomplishing the ultimate competitive goal in hockey, they didn't fare as well financially. The Blackhawks finished the season in the red in spite of nightly sellouts, record merchandise sales and a long playoff run. Rocky Wirtz first disclosed the team's fiscal issues while speaking at a private forum at the Economic Club of Chicago back in April. In an interview this week, he reiterated that team was overdrawn a number of times which required infusions of cash from other businesses within the Wirtz empire. While a deep playoff run helped, it still didn't add enough to the team's coffers to get the team into the black. Team executives wouldn't disclose the exact shortfall, but the team used the red ink to justify raising season ticket prices by 20 percent for next year. more ›

... and it is good. more ›

Just days ago, Blackhawks GM Stan Bowman claimed that he didn't need to make any additional trades related to salary cap issues. He had already traded away Dustin Byfuglien, Brent Sopel, Ben Eager and Colin Fraser in the wake of the team's recent Stanley Cup victory. more ›

Last weekend's Pride Parade held special significance as two of the city's major-leaguers - both the Blackhawks and the Cubs - were represented with floats in the day of epic gayness. The Blackhawks, Stanley Cup in tow, brought along defenseman Brent Sopel to the gayla. The Cubs, meanwhile, enlisted "Mr. Cub" Ernie Banks to head up their contingent alongside the Ricketts family. While the teams' decisions have been celebrated by many, not everyone was thrilled with the Cubs and Blackhawks' newfound pride. more ›

If you missed the Stanley Cup's recent tour of River North bars of questionable quality or don't happen to work at a major media outlet (we're still waiting on our visit), you can still get your photo taken with the Stanley Cup. Just be prepared to wait in line a loooooong time. The Cup is in Daley Plaza today from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. so that the general public can get up close and personal for a photo opp. Just don't expect there to be a professional photographer on site; this is Daley Plaza, not Olan Mills. So be sure to grab your camera on your way over to the plaza. more ›

We awoke to rain and thunder yesterday morning and, for just a moment, we thought it might put a damper on yesterday's Pride parade. Luckily, though, by the time the parade stepped off, the rain had moved on and the skies cleared up for a gorgeous - if somewhat hot and humid - afternoon for a fantastic parade that featured country singer Chely Wright as grand marshal and the Stanley Cup as well as dozens of floats, creative costumes, politicians (save for GOP Gubernatorial candidate Bill Brady), and a hell of a lot of fun. more ›

We've mentioned more than a few Pride-related events and even talked about why the parade still matters. So here's hoping you don't forget the big show this weekend, the 41st Annual Pride Parade. The parade starts tomorrow at high noon (12 p.m. to you number-oriented folks) at Halsted & Belmont and then heads north on Halsted until it hits Broadway, then turning and heading south on Broadway until Diversey. From there, it heads east on Diversey until Canon Dr. in Lincoln Park. Country singer Chely Wright has the honor being this year's Grand Marshal and there's lots more to look for, including Mr. Cub himself, Ernie Banks, in the first Pride Parade float ever sponsored by the Cubs. And, oh, a little piece of hardware that the city has been excited about for a few weeks will also make an appearance on the Crew float. more ›

While many folks will be taking in the sights of hundreds of drag queens, a lesbian country starlet, the newly gay-friendly-fied Stanley Cup and even a giant cat head (courtesy of Threadless) this Sunday for the 41st annual Pride Parade in Boystown, the day also carries a perhaps more serious meaning: National HIV Testing Day. more ›

The Blackhawks' whirlwind tour of the city with the Stanley Cup in tow continues (we're still waiting for you to visit our office, guys). Last night, Colin Fraser, Kris Versteeg, Andrew Ladd, Troy Brouwer, and Lord Stanley's Cup visited Ellen DeGeneres, taping a show at the Chicago Theater as part of the TBS Just For Laughs festival. No word yet on when Ellen's special will air on TBS; the Just For Laughs fest continues through Saturday night with plenty of awesome performances. more ›

• A new report outlines how police missed crucial clues in the first hours of the Riley Fox investigation.
• Prosecutors in former governor Rod Blagojevich's trial want the ex-gov to quit yapping about what he thinks of the trial. Inherit the Windbag, indeed.
• Kicking a President while his hands are full, GOP gubernatorial candidate Bill Brady says he could beat Obama in an election right now. Obama has yet to respond with a challenge to meet Brady at the flag pole after school or as to whose dad could beat up the other dads.

The Blackhawks have been taking Lord Stanley's Cup on quite a bar crawl in the week since they won it and reports are coming in on a daily basis. While they might have been out in LA last night to walk on The Tonight Show, they've also been hitting up lots of watering holes and there's a way you can track where it's been and where it might be going. There's a nice Google Map mash-up (thanks, Natasha!) that's been tracking where the Cup has been spotted. But for a more real-time tracking option, there's the Where's The Cup Twitter account that tweets out reports from followers of locations of the Cup. So if you want to get your own glimpse of the Cup, start tracking and good luck. more ›

Ozzie Guillen claimed the Sox parade was bigger and better (but he's admittedly biased), WBEZ explores the booing of Mayor Daley at the rally, and Deadspin uncovered an example of jerkstores ruining it for everyone. Of course, we can't wrap up our coverage of the Blackhawks events (at least until they bring the Stanley Cup to our office or a happy hour) on such a sour note, so enjoy this pretty cool time-lapse of the entire parade. more ›

The parade and rally are done and while we don't expect folks to stop celebrating any time soon, you can relive the Blackhawks' Stanley Cup Championship parade and celebration with these photos. (RedEye has some great photos here.) More to come... more ›

As the parade and victory rally continue, we thought we'd take another look back at more of Wednesday night's celebrations. [previously] more ›

The parade isn't to kick off for almost another hour, but based on some of theses photos, the crowd is already thick and getting thicker. And if you're like me - stuck in the office while the city celebrates (don't worry, I got a victory parade in earlier this year) - you can watch the parade streaming on a few sites, including ABC 7, WGN 9, CBS 2, Fox, and NBC 5. And if you ARE going, don't forget to share your photos here and we'll post some on the site later! more ›

The Blackhawks are Stanley Cup champions so, of course, there was plenty of celebrating to do, even if the team clinched the Cup on the road. Here are photos from a few places around town of people celebrating. All in all, it was a very polite celebration as far as major sports championships go with just 19 arrests being reported. Keep the photos coming in our Flickr Pool and we'll try to share more later. more ›

The Blackhawks are already back and taking the Stanley Cup around town which means it's time for the party. The team and city have set the victory parade and rally for tomorrow morning, meaning it's going to be a pretty short work day for a lot of people in the Loop. The parade itself kicks off at 10:30 a.m. at Washington and Wacker and then will head east along Washington, taking a turn north on Michigan. The parade will end at Michigan and Wacker - where the parade will hopefully proceed single-file - and that's where the rally will begin at 11:30 a.m. The Tribune has a handy map in case you're more visually-oriented when getting directions. We'll have several staff members there soaking in the fun. If you're there, feel free to share your photos in our Flickr Pool for possible posting here on the site! more ›

For the first time in 49 years, the Chicago Blackhawks are Stanley Cup Champions, beating the Philadelphia Flyers 4-3 in a dramatic Game Six, using aggressive offense, a locked-down defense, and stellar goal-tending to clinch victory in an overtime thriller and hoist the Cup. more ›

With Game Six of the Stanley Cup Finals tonight, the folks at the Associated Press are filtering through their archives and releasing some photos from the 1961 NHL playoffs, the last time the Blackhawks claimed the Cup. more ›

Hey there, readers. We hear there's something of an important hockey game happening tonight. We imagine many of you will be out and about the town watching the game at a bar of your choosing or somewhere like the Brew & View which is showing the game on the big screen for free. It could be a big night for the Blackhawks but we don't want to jinx it, so we're going to word this request very carefully. At the conclusion of tonight's game, depending on the outcome, many of you may participate in certain post-game activities. We're asking two things of you if this is the case: more ›

Having won the first two games on their home ice, the Blackhawks' quest for the Stanley Cup moved to Philadelphia for Game Three. In a tightly contested game, the 'Hawks and Flyers required overtime to determine the winner Wednesday night and Philly eventually left the Wachovia Center ice as 4-3 winners, cutting the Blackhawks' series lead to 2-1. Each of the games have been decided by a single goal. more ›

• The autopsy on a Northwestern University student found dead this weekend in the University library was inconclusive. Meanwhile, the autopsy on the man who died during Bike The Drive died of natural causes.
• It looks like that oil spill in the Gulf will be continuing throughout the summer after BP's efforts to plug the hole failed.
• A nice mash-up mapping the locations and times for this year's Movies in the Parks screenings.

• "It was a lot of fun. And, I almost had a heart attack." - Kris Versteeg [Blackhawks.com]
• "Shootout at the OK Corral. I don't think anybody envisioned 5-5 heading into the third period." - Coach Quenneville [Tribune]
• "They challenge the puck a little bit, so I was just kind of a little patient and I just slid it in." - Tomas Kopecky [ESPN]