title: Enoch Powell

text: On 16 May 1994, Powell spoke at the Bruges Group and said Europe had "destroyed one Prime Minister and will destroy another Prime Minister yet" and demanded powers surrendered to the European Court of Justice to be repatriated. In June 1994, he wrote an article for the "Daily Mail", where he stated that "Britain is waking from the nightmare of being part of the continental bloc, to rediscover that these offshore islands belong to the outside world and lie open to its oceans". Innovations in contemporary society did not worry him: "When exploration has run its course, we shall revert to the normal type of living to which nature and instinct predispose us. The decline will not have been permanent. The deterioration will not have been irreversible".


title: Enoch Powell

text: In his book "The Evolution of the Gospel", published in August 1994, Powell said he had arrived at the view that Jesus Christ was not crucified but stoned to death by the Jews. Bishop John Austin Baker commented "He is a great classicist, but theology is out of his academic field."


title: Enoch Powell

text: Following his death, Powell's friend Richard Ritchie recorded in 1998 that "during one of the habitual coal crises of recent years he told me that he had no objection to supporting the coal industry, either through the restriction of cheap coal imports or subsidy, if it were the country's wish to preserve local coal communities".


title: Enoch Powell

text: In the 1990s, Powell endorsed three UKIP candidates in parliamentary elections. He also turned down two invitations to stand for the party in elections, citing retirement.


title: Enoch Powell

text: In April 1995, he said in an interview that for the Conservatives "defeat [at the next election] would help. It helps one to change one's tune". The party was just "slithering around". The same month, he took part at a debate on Europe at the Cambridge Union and won.


title: Enoch Powell

text: In July 1995, there was a leadership election for the Conservative Party, in which Major resigned as leader of the party and stood in the election. Powell wrote, "He says to the Sovereign: I no longer am leader of the majority party in the House of Commons; but I am carrying on as your Prime Minister. Now I don't think anybody can say that—at least without inflicting damage on the constitution". To seek to offer advice to the Queen while unable to feel they could command a majority in the Commons was "tantamount to treating the monarch herself with disrespect and denying the very principle in which our parliamentary democracy is founded". After Major's challenger, John Redwood, was defeated, Powell wrote to him, "Dear Redwood, you will never regret the events of the last week or two. Patience will evidently have to be exercised—and patience is the greatest of the political virtues—by those of us who want to keep Britain independent and self-governed".


title: Enoch Powell

text: During the final years of his life, he managed occasional pieces of journalism and co-operated in a BBC documentary about his life in 1995 ("Odd Man Out" was broadcast on 11 November). In April 1996, he wrote an article for the "Daily Express", in which he said: "Those who consented to the surrender made in 1972 will have to think again. Thinking again means that activity most unthinkable for politicians—unsaying what has been said. The surrender ... we have made is not irrevocable. Parliament still has the power (thank God) to reclaim what has been surrendered by treaty. It is time we told the other European nations what we mean by being self-governed". In October, he gave his last interview, to Matthew d'Ancona in the "Sunday Telegraph".


title: Enoch Powell

text: He said: "I have lived into an age in which my ideas are now part of common intuition, part of a common fashion. It has been a great experience, having given up so much to find that there is now this range of opinion in all classes, that an agreement with the EEC is totally incompatible with normal parliamentary government. ... The nation has returned to haunt us". When Labour won the 1997 general election, Powell told his wife, Pamela Wilson, "They have voted to break up the United Kingdom." She rejoined the Conservative Party the next day, but he did not. By then, Powell had been hospitalised several times as a result of a succession of falls.


title: Enoch Powell

text: A few hours following Powell's final admission to King Edward VII's Hospital in London, he asked where his lunch was. On being told that he was being fed intravenously, he remarked, "I don't call that much of a lunch." These were his last recorded words. On 8 February 1998, he died there at the age of 85. His study of the Gospel of John remained unfinished.


title: Enoch Powell

text: Dressed in a brigadier's uniform, Powell's body was buried in his regiment's plot in Warwick Cemetery, Warwickshire, ten days after a family funeral service at Westminster Abbey and public services at St. Margaret's, Westminster and the Collegiate Church of St Mary, Warwick.


title: Enoch Powell

text: Over 1,000 people attended Powell's funeral, and during the ceremony he was hailed as a man of prophecy, political sacrifice and as a great parliamentarian. During the service, Lord Biffen said that Powell's nationalism "certainly did not bear the stamp of racial superiority or xenophobia". After Powell's death, many Conservative politicians paid tribute to him, including former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who said, "There will never be anybody else so compelling as Enoch Powell. He was magnetic. Listening to his speeches was an unforgettable privilege. He was one of those rare people who made a difference and whose moral compass led us in the right direction." Other mourners at the service included socialist Labour MP Tony Benn who, despite criticising the "Rivers of Blood" speech, maintained a close relationship with Powell, and when asked why he had attended the funeral, simply responded with "he was my friend."


title: Enoch Powell

text: Other politicians, including his rivals, also paid tribute to him, including former Labour party leader Tony Blair who said, "However controversial his views, he was one of the great figures of 20th-century British politics, gifted with a brilliant mind. However much we disagreed with many of his views, there was no doubting the strength of his convictions or their sincerity, or his tenacity in pursuing them, regardless of his own political self-interest."


title: Enoch Powell

text: Powell was reading Ancient Greek by the age of five, which he learned from his mother. At the age of 70, he began learning his 14th and final language, Hebrew.


title: Enoch Powell

text: Despite his earlier atheism, Powell became a devout member of the Church of England, thinking in 1949 "that he heard the bells of St Peter's Wolverhampton calling him" while walking to his flat in his (then future) constituency. Subsequently, he became a churchwarden of St. Margaret's, Westminster.


title: Enoch Powell

text: On 2 January 1952, the 39-year-old Powell married 26-year-old Margaret Pamela Wilson, a former colleague from the Conservative Central Office. Their first daughter, Susan, was born in January 1954, and their second daughter, Jennifer, was born in October 1956.


title: Enoch Powell

text: Powell firmly believed that William Shakespeare of Stratford on Avon was not the writer of the plays and poems of Shakespeare. He appeared on an episode of "Frontline", "The Shakespeare Mystery," 19 April 1989, in which he said, "My astonishment was to discover that these were the works of someone who'd 'been in the kitchen.' They are written by someone who has lived the life, who has been part of a life of politics and power, who knows what people feel when they are near to the centre of power. Near to the heat of the kitchen." He called the traditional biography a "Stratfordian fantasy." On the subject of Shakespeare's will, he says, "That is a will in which this great spirit, this man of immense learning and vision, not only bequeathed no books..." but he also neglected to bequeath "the most valuable thing he had to bequeath, the remaining manuscripts of his plays which were eventually to be published seven years after his death." Powell calls the Droeshout portrait of Shakespeare in the "First Folio", and the monument to Shakespeare in Stratford "a mask," "a fix," "a spoof" to conceal the identity of the true author.


title: Enoch Powell

text: Powell's rhetorical gifts were also employed, with success, beyond politics. He was a poet of some accomplishment, with four published collections to his name: "First Poems"; "Casting Off"; "Dancer's End"; and "The Wedding Gift". His "Collected Poems" appeared in 1990. He translated Herodotus' "Histories" and published many other works of classical scholarship. He published a biography of Joseph Chamberlain, which treated the split with William Gladstone over Irish Home Rule in 1886 as the pivotal point of his career, rather than the adoption of tariff reform, and contained the line: "All political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure, because that is the nature of politics and of all human affairs". His political publications were often as critical of his own party as they were of Labour, often making fun of what he saw as logical fallacies in reasoning or action. His book "Freedom & Reality" contained many quotes from Labour party manifestos or by Harold Wilson that he regarded as nonsensical.


title: Enoch Powell

text: When asked by BBC interviewer Michael Parkinson what he regarded as his achievements, he replied "it is doubtful whether any man can say how the world was altered because he was in it." In August 2002, Powell appeared 55th in the List of 100 Greatest Britons of all time (voted for by the public in a BBC nationwide poll).


title: Enoch Powell

text: In March 2015, "The Independent" reported that Powell was one of the MPs whose activities had been investigated as part of Operation Fernbridge. His name had been passed to police by Paul Butler, the Bishop of Durham, after allegations of Powell's involvement in historic child abuse had been made by one individual in the 1980s to the then Bishop of Monmouth, Dominic Walker. Simon Heffer, who has published a biography of Powell, has described the allegation as a "monstrous lie" and criticised the Church of England's actions in "putting this smear into the public domain", while the church stated that it had simply responded to an inquiry from the press and confirmed that allegations about Powell, which related to an alleged satanic cult rather than any criminal activity, had been passed to the police. David Aaronovitch of "The Times" wrote in April 2015 that the 1980s claims about Powell originated from fabricated claims invented by a conman, Derry Mainwaring Knight, whose false assertions had become known to the clergy, but had been unwittingly conveyed to the police in good faith.


title: Enoch Powell

text: According to Michael Bloch, in his old age, Powell confessed to Canon Eric James, a former Trinity College Chaplain, that he had been in love with a fellow male undergraduate at Cambridge, whom Bloch identifies as "probably Edward Curtis of Clare College", and that this infatuation had inspired love verses published in his "First Poems". This confession was revealed by James in a letter to "The Times" on 10 February 1998.


title: Enoch Powell

text: Following his appointment as Professor of Greek at the University of Sydney in 1937, he wrote to his parents (on 22 May and 16 June 1938) that he was repelled by his female students, while feeling "an instant and instinctive affection" for young Australian males. This, he added, might be "deplored, but it cannot be altered", and it therefore had to be "endured – and (alas!) camouflaged." The letters are now in the Churchill College Archives (POLL 1/1/1).


title: Enoch Powell

text: Following a long illness, Pamela Powell died in November 2017 at the age of 91, 19 years after her husband.


title: Enoch Powell

text: Powell delivered his Rivers of Blood speech on 20 April 1968. A poll which was taken after the speech reported that 74 per cent of Britons agreed with Powell's opinions on mass immigration. In "The Trial of Enoch Powell", a Channel 4 television broadcast in April 1998, on the thirtieth anniversary of his Rivers of Blood speech (and two months after his death), 64 per cent of the studio audience voted that Powell was not a racist. Some in the Church of England, of which Powell was a member, took a different view. Upon Powell's death, black Barbados-born Wilfred Wood, then Bishop of Croydon, said "Enoch Powell gave a certificate of respectability to white racist views which otherwise decent people were ashamed to acknowledge".


title: Enoch Powell

text: Conservative commentator Bruce Anderson has claimed that the Rivers of Blood speech would have come as a complete surprise to anyone who had studied Powell's record: he had been a West Midlands MP for 18 years but had said hardly anything about immigration. On this view, the speech was merely part of a badly miscalculated strategy to become party leader if Heath fell. Anderson adds that the speech had no effect on immigration, except to make it more difficult for the subject to be discussed rationally in polite society.


title: Enoch Powell

text: Powell's opponents claimed he was far-right, fascist and racist. His supporters claim that the first two charges clash with his voting record on most social issues, such as homosexual law reform (he was actually a co-sponsor of a bill on this issue in May 1965 and opposed the death penalty, both reforms unpopular among Conservatives at the time; however, he kept a low profile to his stance on these non-party "issues of conscience"). Powell voted against the reinstitution of the death penalty several times between 1969 and 1987.


title: Enoch Powell

text: By the early 1960s, Powell was in support of the campaign for immigration controls. The earliest and only statement from then by Powell on immigration was in August 1956, when, in Wolverhampton, Powell said that "a fundamental change in the law is necessary" in the UK's citizenship law. However, he explained that a change was not needed at that time, but did not rule out the possibility of a future change. In the late 1950s, when other Conservatives were advocating a campaign for immigration control following race riots, Powell declined to join them, remarking that it was no good discussing the details when the "real issue" of the citizenship laws had remained unchanged. In November 1960, Powell became one of nine members of the ministerial committee which wanted to introduce controls of Commonwealth immigration; he submitted a letter in April 1961 which said "if we desire to limitations or conditions on the entry of coloured British subjects into this country" a change in the existing legal definition of a "British subject" was needed, since the British Nationality Act of 1948 considered all those from independent Commonwealth countries listed under the UK's nationality law to be British subjects.


title: Enoch Powell

text: Concerns raised about effects of coloured immigration in communities in his constituency played a part in his commentary. In March 1968, the month before the "Rivers of Blood" speech, he made his first public references to them in a speech in Walsall, when he described the concern of an anonymous constituent whose daughter was the only white child in her primary school class and suffered bullying from non-white pupils. When Wolverhampton "Express and Star" journalists failed to find the child or the class, the paper's editor and a then personal friend, Clement Jones, challenged him, stating Jones himself had similar anonymous complaints that were traced to members of the National Front (NF). Powell would not accept the explanation, and told Jones he had received "bags of supporting mail" as a result of the Walsall speech.


title: Enoch Powell

text: During an interview with the "Birmingham Post", a fortnight after Powell's "Rivers of Blood" speech, he was asked whether or not he was a racialist. He replied:


title: Enoch Powell

text: Powell accepted an invitation to appear on David Frost's evening television programme on 3 January 1969. Frost asked Powell whether or not he was a racialist, to which Powell replied:


title: Enoch Powell

text: During the 1970 election, Tony Benn declared in a speech that Powell's approach to immigration was 'evil', and said "The flag of racialism which has been hoisted in Wolverhampton is beginning to look like the one that fluttered over Dachau and Belsen." In response, when a television reporter told Powell at a meeting of Benn's comments, he snatched the microphone and replied "All I will say is that for myself, in 1939 I voluntarily returned from Australia to this country, to serve as a private soldier against Germany and Nazism. I am the same man today." Similarly, Powell responded to student hecklers at a speech in Cardiff: "I hope those who shouted 'Fascist' and 'Nazi' are aware that before they were born I was fighting against Fascism and Nazism."


title: Enoch Powell

text: In November 1968, Powell also suggested that the problems that would be caused if there were a large influx of Germans or Russians into the UK "would be as serious – and in some respects more serious – than could follow from the introduction of a similar number of West Indies or Pakistanis".


title: Enoch Powell

text: Powell said his views were neither genetic nor eugenic, and that he never arranged his fellow men on a merit according to their origins.


title: Enoch Powell

text: In 1944, when Powell was visiting Poona with another member of the Joint Intelligence Committee, an Indian, General (later Field Marshal) K. M. Cariappa, he refused to stay at the Byculla club once it became clear that Cariappa as an Indian would not be allowed to stay there. Close friends also recall that Powell took great pleasure in speaking Urdu when dining at Indian restaurants.


title: Enoch Powell

text: Nevertheless, Powell's nationalism and accusations of racialism sometimes trod a fine line. In 1996, BBC journalist Michael Cockerell asked him about the language he used in the "Rivers of Blood" speech, arguing that it could be used by self-proclaimed racialists against non-whites. In defence of the language he used in the speech, Powell replied:


title: Enoch Powell

text: Powell further went on to say that "it's not impossible but it's difficult, for a non-white person to be British."


title: Enoch Powell

text: Victoria Honeyman, Lecturer in Politics at the University of Leeds in England, wrote of Powell's beliefs on immigration:


title: Enoch Powell

text: Powell's speeches and TV interviews throughout his political life displayed a suspicion towards "the Establishment" in general, and by the 1980s there was a regular expectation that he would make some sort of speech or act in a way designed to upset the government and ensure he would not be offered a life peerage (and thus be transferred to the House of Lords), which, some believe, he had no intention of accepting so long as Edward Heath sat in the Commons. (Heath remained in the Commons until after Powell's death.) He had opposed the Life Peerages Act, and felt it would be hypocritical to accept a life peerage himself since no Prime Minister ever offered him a hereditary peerage.


title: Enoch Powell

text: According to Libertarian theorist Murray Rothbard, Powellism was seen as a proper step toward free markets in the early 1970s, writing:


title: Enoch Powell

text: Powell sat for sculptor Alan Thornhill for a portrait in clay. The correspondence file relating to the Powell portrait bust is held as part of the Thornhill Papers (2006:56) in the archive of the Henry Moore Foundation's Henry Moore Institute in Leeds and the terracotta remains in the collection of the artist. English photographer Allan Warren photographed many portraits of Powell.


title: Enoch Powell

text: There are 24 images of Powell in the National Portrait Gallery Collection including work by Bassano's studios, Anne-Katrin Purkiss, and a 1971 cartoon by Gerald Scarfe.


title: Syrian Democratic Forces

text: The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) is an armed militia of the rebels in North and East Syria (AANES). An alliance of forces formed during the Syrian civil war composed primarily of Kurdish, Arab, and Assyrian/Syriac, as well as some smaller Armenian, Turkmen and Chechen forces. It is militarily led by the People's Protection Units (YPG), a Kurdish militia recognized as a terrorist group by Turkey, and also includes several ethnic militias, as well as elements of the Syrian opposition's Free Syrian Army. Founded in October 2015, the SDF states its mission as fighting to create a secular, democratic and federalised Syria. According to Turkey, the Syrian Democratic Forces has direct links to the PKK.


title: Syrian Democratic Forces

text: The primary opponents of the SDF are the various Islamist and Arab nationalist forces supported by Turkey, involved in the civil war, in particular al-Qaeda affiliates, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), the Syrian National Army (TFSA), the Turkish Armed Forces, and their allies. The SDF has focused primarily on the so-called Islamic State, successfully driving them from important strategic areas, such as Al-Hawl, Shaddadi, Tishrin Dam, Manbij, al-Tabqah, Tabqa Dam, Baath Dam, and ISIL's former capital of Raqqa. In March 2019, the SDF announced the total territorial defeat of the Islamic State in Syria, with the SDF taking control of the last stronghold in Baghuz.


title: Syrian Democratic Forces

text: Since the territorial defeat of the Islamic State, the SDF has increasingly been involved with resisting the growing Turkish occupation of northern Syria.


title: Syrian Democratic Forces

text: The establishment of the SDF was announced on 11 October 2015 during a press conference in al-Hasakah. The alliance built on longstanding previous cooperation between the founding partners. While the People's Protection Units (Yekîneyên Parastina Gel, YPG) and the Women's Protection Units (Yekîneyên Parastina Jin, YPJ) had been operating throughout the regions of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, the other founding partners were more geographically focused.


title: Syrian Democratic Forces

text: Geographically focused on the Euphrates Region were the YPG's partners in the Euphrates Volcano joint operations room, several mainstream Syrian rebel factions of the Free Syrian Army, who had helped defend the Kurdish town of Kobanî during the Siege of Kobanî. Liwa Thuwwar al-Raqqa had been expelled by the al-Nusra Front and ISIL from the city of Raqqa for its alliance with the YPG. The group participated in the capture of Tell Abyad from the Islamic State.


title: Syrian Democratic Forces

text: Geographically focused on the Jazira Region in northeast Syria were the Assyrian Syriac Military Council (Mawtbo Fulhoyo Suryoyo, MFS) and the al-Sanadid Forces of the Arab Shammar tribe, both of whom had cooperated with the YPG in fighting ISIL since 2013. The MFS is further politically aligned with the YPG via their shared secular ideology of democratic confederalism, which in the Assyrian community is known as the "Dawronoye" movement.


title: Syrian Democratic Forces

text: Geographically focused on the Manbij Region was the Army of Revolutionaries (Jaysh al-Thuwar, JAT), itself an alliance of several groups of diverse ethnic and political backgrounds, who had in common that they had been rejected by the mainstream Syrian opposition for their secular, anti-Islamist views and affiliations.


title: Syrian Democratic Forces

text: On 10 December 2015, after a two-day conference, the Syrian Democratic Council was established. Human rights activist Haytham Manna and Ilham Ehmed were elected co-chairman/woman at its founding. The Assembly establishing the Syrian Democratic Council was made up of 13 members of different ethnic, economic and political backgrounds.


title: Syrian Democratic Forces

text: The SDF was in control of about 25% of the territory of Syria. In 2018, following a Turkish invasion into north west Syria, the SDF left Afrin. In October 2019, the SDF had to retreat from Tell Abyad and Ras al-Ayn after a renewed Turkish invasion of Syrian territory.


title: Syrian Democratic Forces

text: At the time of its founding in late 2015, "The Economist" described the SDF as "essentially a subsidiary of the Kurdish YPG". At the end of October, the al-Shaitat tribal militia, the Desert Hawks Brigade, joined the SDF to fight ISIL in the southern countryside of Hasakah Governorate. In November, the FSA group Euphrates Jarabulus Battalions announced its accession to the SDF. In December, members of the Deir ez-Zor Governorate-based Arab tribe al-Shaitat joined the SDF, sending fighters to al-Shaddadah.


title: Syrian Democratic Forces

text: With continuous growth in particular due to Arab groups and volunteers joining, in March 2016 only an estimated 60% of the men and women in the SDF fighting force were ethnic Kurds. Growth in particular of Arab, Turkmen and Assyrian participation in the SDF has since continued. In an interview on the first anniversary of the SDF's founding, spokesman Talal Silo, an ethnic Turkmen and former commander of the Seljuq Brigade, stated that "we started with 13 factions and now there are 32 factions", and that "90 percent" of the SDF growth since it began its operations were ethnic Arabs. In the context of the November 2016 Northern Raqqa offensive, "The Economist" said the SDF fighting force to be composed of "about 20,000 YPG fighters and about 10,000 Arabs". The next month in December 2016, Colonel John Dorrian, the Operation Inherent Resolve spokesman, stated that the SDF contained around 45,000 fighters, of which more than 13,000 were Arabs.


title: Syrian Democratic Forces

text: According to a March 2017 statement of the Spokesman for the International Coalition forces, U.S. Colonel John Dorrian, 75 percent of the SDF forces fighting in Operation Wrath of Euphrates to isolate ISIL's de facto capital of Raqqa were Syrian Arabs, a reflection of the demographic composition of that area. "The Syrian Democratic Forces are a multi-ethnic and multi-sectarian organization, and that is one of the reasons why we're working with them and they have continued to build the Arab element of their force." Concerning the SDF in general, Lieutenant General Stephen Townsend in the same month said that "I'm seeing what is probably a pretty broad coalition of people and the Kurds may be providing the leadership, because they have a capable leader who's stepped up to this challenge. And they are providing some of the organisational skill, but I see a large contingent about 23 to 25, 000 so far and growing, Arabs, who are marching to liberate their part of northern Syria. So, I don't see a Kurdish state. I see a multi-cultural, multi-party, multi-ethnic, multi-sectarian Syrian region being liberated from ISIS. Over."


title: Syrian Democratic Forces

text: Late June, an analysis by the Counter Terrorism Center at West Point said "growing acceptance of the SDF by Sunni Arab rebel groups" and more generally "growing legitimacy of the SDF". Another analysis as of late June described the YPG as "only one faction of many within the SDF", however that "it's the YPG that makes the SDF reliable and effective. The SDF's other components function as auxiliaries to the SDF's 'backbone', the YPG, which ensures effective, unitary command and control."


title: Syrian Democratic Forces

text: On 15 March 2017, a video surfaced that showed members of the Northern Sun Battalion reportedly torturing an ISIL fighter, who had been captured while planting mines. One of these mines had reportedly killed nine fighters of the battalion, leading five others to take revenge on the ISIL militant. The Manbij Military Council condemned the act, and announced that the involved Northern Sun Battalion fighters would be held for trial for violating the Geneva Conventions. The five accused were arrested on 17 March.


title: Syrian Democratic Forces

text: In June 2015 the Turkish government and Amnesty International reported that the YPG was carrying out an ethnic cleansing of non-Kurdish populations as part of a plan to join the Jazira and Euphrates regions into a single territory.


title: Syrian Democratic Forces

text: The U.S. State Department reacted by stating they would 'scrutinise' Amnesty International's accusations. The U.S. State Department stated it had to determine if there was "any veracity to the claims", but showed concern by calling for any administrator in the area to rule "with respect for all groups regardless of ethnicity". The report makes accusations of looting, coercing civilians to join their armed forces and the forced targeted displacement of 1400 families in the Turkman villages of Hammam al-Turkman, 800 Turkmen from Mela Berho and Suluk residents. The report offers unnamed witness testimony from reported victims, cross referenced with photo and video evidence, media reports, and satellite imagery to substantiate these reports.


title: Syrian Democratic Forces

text: In a report published by the United Nations' Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic on 10 March 2017, the Commission refuted Amnesty International's reports of ethnic cleansing, stating that "'though allegations of 'ethnic cleansing' continued to be received during the period under review, the Commission found no evidence to substantiate reports that YPG or SDF forces ever targeted Arab communities on the basis of ethnicity".


title: Syrian Democratic Forces

text: In interviews, YPG spokespersons acknowledged that a number of families were in fact displaced. However, they placed the number at no more than 25, and stated military necessity. They stated that the family members of terrorists maintained communications with them, and therefore had to be removed from areas where they might pose a danger. They further reported that ISIL was using civilians in those areas to plant car bombs or carry out other attacks on the YPG.


title: Syrian Democratic Forces

text: In June 2014, Human Rights Watch criticized the YPG for accepting minors into their ranks, picking up on multiple earlier reports of teenage fighters serving in the YPG, with a report by the United Nations Secretary General stating that 24 minors under age of 18 had been recruited by YPG, with 124 having been recruited by the Free Syrian Army and 5 by the Syrian Arab Army. In response, the YPG and YPJ signed the Geneva Call "Deed of Commitment" protecting children in armed conflict, prohibiting sexual violence and against gender discrimination in July 2014, and Kurdish security forces (YPG and Asayish) began receiving human rights training from Geneva Call and other international organisations with the YPG pledging publicly to demobilize all fighters under 18 within a month and began to enact disciplinary measures against commanders of the units that had involved in corruption and accepting recruit under age of 18 to their ranks. In October 2015 the YPG demobilized 21 minors from the military service in its ranks.


title: Syrian Democratic Forces

text: In response to reports issued by international organisations such as Human Rights Watch, the general command of the SDF issued a military order prohibiting the recruitment of children. On 29 June 2019 Abdi, as representative of the SDF, signed the action plan of the United Nations aiming to prevent the enlistment of child soldiers in the armed forces. The action plan was signed to address the inclusion of the YPG in the SDF.


title: Syrian Democratic Forces

text: In 2020, United Nations reported SDF as the largest faction in the Syrian civil war by the number recruited child soldiers, with 283 child soldiers followed by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham with 245 child soldiers.


The 2022 United States Senate election in Missouri was held on November 8, 2022, concurrently with elections for all other Class 3 U.S. senators and elections for the U.S. House of Representatives, to select a member of the United States Senate to represent the state of Missouri. Incumbent Republican Senator Roy Blunt announced that he would not seek reelection to a third term in office. Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt won the election to succeed him.


title: 2022 United States Senate election in Missouri

text: Anheuser-Busch heiress Trudy Busch Valentine won the Democratic primary. John Wood, a former Bush administration official and a January 6 Committee investigator, announced that he would run for the seat as an independent on June 29, but he withdrew from the race after former Missouri Governor Eric Greitens lost the Republican primary to Schmitt. Schmitt subsequently won the election, albeit by a slightly reduced margin from Trump in 2020, though also far greater than by the percentage Blunt defeated Jason Kander 6 years prior.


text: The day before the primary, former president Donald Trump released a statement endorsing "ERIC". There were three candidates with the first name Eric running in the Republican primary: Eric Greitens, Eric McElroy, and Eric Schmitt. Trump's statement did not offer any clarification on whether this was an endorsement for one or multiple candidates, and when reached for comment by NBC News, Trump's office declined to clarify the endorsement, saying it "speaks for itself". However, Politico reported it as an endorsement for both Greitens and Schmitt, as Trump had apparently expressed indecision on which of the two men to back before a dual endorsement was suggested; he separately contacted both candidates to pledge his support, and both subsequently claimed the endorsement as being for them.


text: As the Democratic primary progressed, three main contenders emerged; Lucas Kunce, director of national security at the American Economic Liberties Project, Spencer Toder, a businessman, and Trudy Busch Valentine, heiress of the Anheuser-Busch brewing company. Kunce and Toder both campaigned as anti-establishment populists, whereas Valentine campaigned in a staid manner with few public appearances.


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: The Chicago Blackhawks (spelled Black Hawks until 1986, and known colloquially as the Hawks) are a professional ice hockey team based in Chicago. The Blackhawks compete in the National Hockey League (NHL) as a member of the Central Division in the Western Conference and have won six Stanley Cup championships since their founding in 1926. They are one of the "Original Six" NHL teams, along with the Detroit Red Wings, Montreal Canadiens, Toronto Maple Leafs, Boston Bruins, and New York Rangers. Since , the team has played their home games at the United Center, which they share with the National Basketball Association's Chicago Bulls; both teams previously played at the now-demolished Chicago Stadium.


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: The Blackhawks' original owner was Frederic McLaughlin, a "hands-on" owner who fired many coaches during his ownership and led the team to win two Stanley Cup titles in 1934 and 1938, respectively. After McLaughlin's death in 1944, the team came under the ownership of the Norris family, who acted as their landlord as owners of the Chicago Stadium, and also owned stakes in several of the NHL teams. At first, the Norris ownership was as part of a syndicate fronted by longtime executive Bill Tobin, and the team languished in favor of the Norris-owned Detroit Red Wings. After the senior James E. Norris died in 1952, the Norris assets were spread among family members, and James D. Norris became the owner of the Blackhawks. The younger Norris took an active interest in the team, which won another Stanley Cup title under his ownership in 1961. After James D. Norris died in 1966, the Wirtz family became owners of the franchise. In 2007, the team came under the control of Rocky Wirtz, who is credited with turning around the organization, which had lost fan interest and competitiveness; under Wirtz, the Blackhawks won the Stanley Cup three times, in 2010, 2013 and 2015.


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: On May 1, 1926, the NHL awarded an expansion franchise for Chicago to a syndicate headed by former football star Huntington Hardwick of Boston. At the same meeting, Hardwick arranged the purchase of the players of the Portland Rosebuds of the Western Hockey League for $100,000 from WHL president Frank Patrick in a deal brokered by Boston Bruins' owner Charles Adams. However, only a month later, Hardwick's group sold out to Chicago coffee tycoon Frederic McLaughlin.


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: McLaughlin had been a commander with the 333rd Machine Gun Battalion of the 86th Infantry Division during World War I. This division was nicknamed the "Blackhawk Division" after Black Hawk, a Native American of the Sauk nation who was a prominent figure in the history of Illinois. McLaughlin named the new hockey team in honor of the military unit, making it one of many sports team names using Native Americans as icons. However, unlike the military division, the team's name was spelled in two words as "Black Hawks" until 1986, when the club officially became the "Blackhawks", based on the spelling found in the original franchise documents.


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: The Black Hawks began play in the 1926–27 season, along with its fellow expansion franchises, the Detroit Cougars (now the Detroit Red Wings) and New York Rangers. The team had to face immediate competition in Chicago from Eddie Livingstone's rival, the Chicago Cardinals, who played in the same building. McLaughlin took a very active role in running the team despite having no background in the sport. He hired Bill Tobin, a former goaltender who had played in the Western League, as his assistant, but directed the team himself. He was also very interested in promoting American players, then very rare in professional hockey. Several of them, including Doc Romnes, Taffy Abel, Alex Levinsky, Mike Karakas, and Cully Dahlstrom, become staples with the team, and under McLaughlin, the Black Hawks were the first NHL team with an all-American-born lineup.


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: The Black Hawks played their first game on November 17, 1926, against the Toronto St. Patricks at the Chicago Coliseum. They won their first game 4–1, in front of a crowd of over 7,000. The Hawks' first season was a moderate success, as they finished the season in third place with a record of 19–22–3. However, they lost the 1927 first-round playoff series to the Boston Bruins.


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: Following the series, McLaughlin fired head coach Pete Muldoon. According to Jim Coleman, sportswriter for the Toronto-based "Globe and Mail", McLaughlin felt that the Hawks were good enough to finish first. Muldoon disagreed, and in a fit of pique, McLaughlin fired him. According to Coleman, Muldoon responded by yelling, "Fire me, Major, and you'll never finish first. I'll put a curse on this team that will hoodoo it until the end of time." The Curse of Muldoon was born – although Coleman admitted years after the fact that he had fabricated the whole incident – and became one of the first widely known sports "curses." While the team would go on to win three Stanley Cups in its first 39 years of existence, it did so without ever having finished in first place, either in a single- or multi-division format. The Black Hawks proceeded to have the worst record in the league in 1927–28, winning only seven of 44 games.


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: For the 1928–29 season, the Black Hawks were originally slated to play in the newly built Chicago Stadium, but due to construction delays and a dispute between McLaughlin and arena promoter Paddy Harmon, they instead divided their time between the Coliseum, the Detroit Olympia, and the Peace Bridge Arena in Fort Erie, Ontario, before moving to Chicago Stadium the following season.


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: By 1931, with goal-scorer Johnny Gottselig, Cy Wentworth on defense, and Charlie Gardiner in goal, the Hawks reached their first Stanley Cup Finals, but fizzled in the final two games against the Montreal Canadiens. They had another stellar season in 1932, but that did not translate into playoff success. However, two years later, Gardiner led his team to victory by shutting out the Detroit Red Wings in the final game of the Stanley Cup Finals; Mush March scored the winning goal in double-overtime as the Hawks beat Detroit 1–0.


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: In 1938, the Black Hawks had a record of 14–25–9, almost missing the playoffs. They stunned the Canadiens and New York Americans on overtime goals in the deciding games of both semi-final series, advancing to the 1938 Stanley Cup Finals against the Toronto Maple Leafs. Black Hawks goaltender Mike Karakas was injured and could not play, forcing a desperate Chicago team to pull minor-leaguer Alfie Moore out of a Toronto bar and onto the ice. Moore played one game and won it. Toronto refused to let Moore play the next, so Chicago used Paul Goodman in Game 2 and lost. However, for the third and fourth games, Karakas was fitted with a special skate to protect his injured toe, and the team won both games. It was too late for Toronto, as the Hawks won their second championship. , the 1938 Black Hawks possess the poorest regular-season record of any Stanley Cup champion.


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: The Black Hawks next returned to the Finals in 1944 behind Doug Bentley's 38 goals, with Bentley's linemate Clint Smith leading the team in assists. After upsetting the Red Wings in the semi-finals, they were promptly dispatched by the dominant Canadiens in four games.


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: After McLaughlin died in December 1944, his estate sold the team to a syndicate headed by longtime team president Bill Tobin. However, Tobin was only a puppet for James E. Norris, who owned the rival Red Wings. Norris had also been the Black Hawks' landlord since his 1936 purchase of the Chicago Stadium. For the next eight years, the Norris-Tobin ownership, as a rule, paid almost no attention to the Black Hawks. Nearly every trade made between Detroit and Chicago ended up being Red Wing heists. As a result, for the next several years, the Black Hawks were the model of futility in the NHL. Between 1945 and 1958, they only made the playoffs twice.


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: In 1950, Norris' eldest son, James D. Norris, and Red Wings minority owner Arthur Wirtz (the senior Norris' original partner in buying the Red Wings 23 years earlier) took over the floundering club. They guided it through financial reversals, and rebuilt the team from there. One of their first moves was to hire former Detroit coach and general manager Tommy Ivan as general manager.


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: In the late 1950s, the Hawks struck gold, acquiring three young prospects (forwards Bobby Hull and Stan Mikita and defenseman Pierre Pilote), and obtaining both star goaltender Glenn Hall and veteran forward Ted Lindsay (who had just had a career season with 30 goals and 55 assists) from Detroit. Hull, Mikita, Pilote, and Hall became preeminent stars of the team, and all four would eventually be inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame.


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: After two first-round exits at the hands of the eventual champions from Montreal in 1959 and 1960, it was expected the Canadiens would once again defeat the Hawks when they met in the semi-finals in 1961. A defensive plan that completely wore down Montreal's superstars worked, however, as Chicago won the series in six games. They then bested the Wings to win their third Stanley Cup championship.


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: The Hawks made the Cup Finals twice more in the 1960s, losing to the Leafs in 1962 and the Canadiens in 1965. They remained a force to be reckoned with throughout the decade, with Hull enjoying four 50-goal seasons, Mikita winning back-to-back scoring titles and MVP accolades, Pilote winning three consecutive Norris Trophies, and Hall being named the First or Second All-Star goaltender eight out of nine seasons. Hull and Mikita especially were widely regarded as the most feared one-two punch in the league. However, despite a strong supporting cast which included Bill Hay, Ken Wharram, Phil Esposito, Moose Vasko, Doug Mohns and Pat Stapleton, the Hawks never quite put it all together.


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: In 1966–67, the last season of the six-team NHL, the Black Hawks finished first, breaking the supposed "Curse of Muldoon", 23 years after the death of Frederic McLaughlin. However, they lost in the semi-finals to Toronto, who went on to win their last Stanley Cup of the era. Afterward, Coleman, who first printed the story of the curse in 1943, admitted that he made the story up to break a writer's block he had as a column deadline approached.


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: Before his death in 1966, one of James D. Norris' last moves in the NHL was to arrange an expansion franchise in St. Louis, where he owned the St. Louis Arena. Tobin died in 1963, a vice president of the team until his death. Ownership now passed to Norris' longtime partner Arthur Wirtz and his son Bill Wirtz. The Wirtz–Norris partnership dated over three decades; Arthur Wirtz had been a minority partner in the syndicate the senior Norris put together to buy the Red Wings in 1932.


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: Goaltender Glenn Hall was drafted by the St. Louis Blues expansion team for the 1967–68 season, while Pierre Pilote was traded to the Maple Leafs in exchange for Jim Pappin in 1968. In the 1968–69 season, despite Bobby Hull breaking his own previous record of 54 goals in a season with 58, the Black Hawks missed the playoffs for the first time since 1958, and the last time before .


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: In 1967, the Black Hawks made a trade with the Boston Bruins that turned out to be one of the most one-sided in the history of the sport. Chicago sent young forwards Phil Esposito, Ken Hodge and Fred Stanfield to Boston in exchange for Pit Martin, Jack Norris and Gilles Marotte. While Martin would star for the Hawks for many seasons, Esposito, Hodge and Stanfield would lead the Bruins to the top of the NHL for several years and capture two Stanley Cups. In Boston, Esposito set numerous scoring records en route to a career as one of the NHL's all-time greats.


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: Nonetheless, in the 1970–71 season, life was made easier for the Black Hawks, as in an attempt to better balance the divisions, the expansion Buffalo Sabres and Vancouver Canucks were both placed in the East Division while the Hawks moved into the West Division. The Hawks became the class of the West overnight, rampaging to a 46–17–15 record and an easy first-place finish. With second-year goalie Tony Esposito (Phil's younger brother and winner of the Calder Memorial Trophy for Rookie of the Year the previous season), Hull, his younger brother Dennis, Mikita, and sterling defensemen Stapleton, Keith Magnuson and Bill White, the Hawks reached the Stanley Cup Finals, losing to the Canadiens.


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: A critical blow to the franchise came in with the start of the World Hockey Association (WHA). Long dissatisfied with how little he was paid as the NHL's marquee star, Hull jumped to the upstart Winnipeg Jets for a million-dollar contract. Former Philadelphia Flyers star Andre Lacroix joined him, having received very little ice time during his single season with Chicago, and the pair became two of the WHA's great stars. However, the Black Hawks repeated their appearance in the Stanley Cup Finals that year, again losing to Montreal. Stapleton also left for the WHA after that year, depleting the team further.


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: While the team led or was second in the West Division for four straight seasons, for the rest of the 1970s, the Black Hawks made the playoffs each year—winning seven division championships in the decade in all—but were never a successful Stanley Cup contender, losing 16-straight playoff games at one point. The team acquired legendary blueliner Bobby Orr from the Boston Bruins in 1976, but ill health forced him to sit out for most of the season, and he eventually retired in 1979, having played only 26 games for the Hawks. Stan Mikita did the same the following year after playing for Chicago for 22 years, the third-longest career for a single team in league history.


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: By 1982, the Black Hawks squeaked into the playoffs as the fourth seed in the Norris Division (at the time the top four teams in each division automatically made the playoffs), and were one of the NHL's Cinderella teams that year. Led by second-year Denis Savard's 32 goals and 119 points and Doug Wilson's 39 goals, the Hawks stunned the Minnesota North Stars and St. Louis Blues in the playoffs before losing to another surprise team, the Vancouver Canucks, who made the Stanley Cup Finals. Chicago proved they were no fluke the next season, also making the third round before losing to the eventual runner-up Edmonton Oilers. After an off-year in 1984, the Hawks again faced a now fresh-off-a-ring Edmonton offensive juggernaut of a team and lost in the third round in 1985.


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: In 1983, Arthur Wirtz died and the club came under the sole control of his son Bill Wirtz. Although the Black Hawks continued to make the playoffs each season, the club began a slow decline, punctuated with an appearance in the 1992 Stanley Cup Finals.


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: During the 1985 playoff series against Edmonton, the Black Hawks and their fans started a tradition of cheering during the singing of "The Star-Spangled Banner".


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: Prior to the 1986–87 season, while going through the team's records, someone discovered the team's original NHL contract and found that the team's name was printed as a compound word ("Blackhawks") as opposed to two separate words ("Black Hawks"), which was the way most sources had been printing it for 60 years and as the team had always officially listed it. The name officially became "Chicago Blackhawks" from that point on.


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: In the late 1980s, Chicago still made the playoffs on an annual basis but made early-round exits each time. In , after three-straight first-round defeats and despite a fourth-place finish in their division in the regular season, Chicago made it to the Conference Final in the rookie seasons of both goalie Ed Belfour and center Jeremy Roenick. However, they would once again fail to make the Stanley Cup Finals, losing to the eventual champions, the Calgary Flames.


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: The following season, the Hawks did prove they were late-round playoff material, running away with the Norris Division title, but, yet again, the third round continued to stymie them, this time against the eventual champion Oilers, despite 1970s Soviet star goaltender Vladislav Tretiak coming to Chicago to become the Blackhawks' goaltender coach.


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: In , Chicago was poised to fare even better in the playoffs, winning the Presidents' Trophy for best regular-season record, but the Minnesota North Stars stunned them in six games in the first round en route to an improbable Stanley Cup Finals appearance. In , the Blackhawks – with Roenick scoring 53 goals, Steve Larmer scoring 29 goals, Chris Chelios (acquired from Montreal two years earlier) on defense, and Belfour in goal – finally reached the Final after 19 years out of such status, winning 11 consecutive playoff games that year, setting an NHL record in the process. However, they were swept four games to none by the Mario Lemieux-led defending Stanley Cup champion, the Pittsburgh Penguins (who, in sweeping the Blackhawks, tied the record Chicago had set only days before). Although the 4–0 sweep indicated Pittsburgh's dominance in games won, it was actually a close series that could have gone either way. Game 1 saw the Blackhawks squander leads of 3–0 and 4–1, and would eventually be beaten 5–4 after a Lemieux power-play goal with nine seconds remaining in regulation. The Blackhawks' most lackluster match was game two, losing 3–1. A frustrating loss of 1–0 followed in game three, and a natural hat trick from Dirk Graham and stellar play from Dominik Hasek (who showed indications of the goaltender he would later become) could not secure a win in game four, which ended in a 6–5 final in favor of Pittsburgh. The defending NBA champion Chicago Bulls were in their finals in , but won their championship in six. This was the only year the city of Chicago would host the NBA and NHL finals concurrently in the same year; Blackhawks head coach Mike Keenan would see this again in New York, when he coached the Rangers to their first Stanley Cup in 54 years in 1994.


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: Belfour posted a 40-win season in as the Hawks looked to go deep yet again, and Chelios accumulated career-high penalty time with 282 minutes in the box, but St. Louis stunned Chicago with a first-round sweep to continue Chicago's playoff losing streak.


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: Although they finished near .500 in 1994, the Blackhawks again qualified for the playoffs. They were eliminated by eventual Western Conference finalist Toronto, but broke their playoff losing streak at 10 games with a game three win. It wasn't enough, however, and the Blackhawks fell in six games. The 1993–94 season was also the Blackhawks' last at the Chicago Stadium, as the team moved into the newly built United Center across the street for the lockout-shortened 1995 season. Bernie Nicholls and Joe Murphy both scored 20 goals over 48 games, and Chicago once again made it to the Western Conference Final, losing to the rival Detroit Red Wings. Also in 1994, management fired Wayne Messmer, popular singer of "The Star-Spangled Banner".


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: Roenick, Belfour and Chelios were all traded away as the Blackhawks faltered through the late 1990s, until they missed the playoffs by five points in 1998 for the first time in 29 years, one season short of tying the Boston Bruins' record for the longest such streak in North American professional sport history. Chicago would also miss the playoffs for a second consecutive season in 1999, and missed the playoffs again in 2000 and 2001.


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: The new millennium started with disappointment for the Blackhawks. Éric Daze, Alexei Zhamnov and Tony Amonte emerged as some of the team's leading stars by this time. However, aside from a quick first-round exit in 2002 (where they lost to the St. Louis Blues in five games after winning Game 1 of the series), the Hawks were consistently out of the playoffs from the 1997–98 season until the 2008–09 season, in most years finishing well out of contention, despite finishing in third place in the Central Division six times. Amonte left for the Phoenix Coyotes in the summer of 2002. During the 2002–03 season, the Blackhawks finished third in the Central Division with 79 points, but would finish ninth in the Western Conference, which would make them miss the playoffs by 13 points.


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: A somber note was struck in February 2004, when ESPN named the Blackhawks the worst franchise in professional sports. Indeed, the Blackhawks were viewed with much indifference by Chicagoans for much of the 1990s and early 2000s due to anger over several policies instituted by then-owner Bill Wirtz, who was derisively known as "Dollar Bill". For example, Wirtz did not allow home games to be televised in the Chicago area, claiming it was unfair to the team's season ticket holders. He also raised ticket prices to an average of $50, making them among the most expensive in the NHL. The Chicago Wolves, an American Hockey League (AHL) team based in Rosemont, Illinois, mocked the Blackhawks' struggle by using the marketing slogan "We Play Hockey the Old-Fashioned Way: We Actually Win."


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: Following the lockout of the 2004–05 season, new general manager Dale Tallon set about restructuring the team in the hopes of making a playoff run. Tallon made several moves in the summer of 2005, most notably the signing of the Tampa Bay Lightning's Stanley Cup-winning goaltender Nikolai Khabibulin and All-Star defenseman Adrian Aucoin. However, injuries plagued Khabibulin and Aucoin among others, and the Blackhawks again finished well out of the playoffs with a 26–43–13 record – next-to-last in the Western Conference, and the second-worst in the NHL. The Blackhawks reached another low point on May 16, 2006, when they announced that popular TV/radio play-by-play announcer Pat Foley would not be brought back after 25 years with the team, a move unpopular amongst most fans; Foley then became the television/radio voice for the Chicago Wolves.


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: With the third overall pick in the 2006 NHL Entry Draft, the team selected Jonathan Toews, who led the University of North Dakota Fighting Sioux hockey team to the 2006 NCAA Frozen Four. The Blackhawks were eager to make a splash in the free-agent market, and offered big money to many of the top free agents. However, they were denied, only being able to acquire two backup goaltenders in Patrick Lalime and Sebastien Caron. Chicago was one of the biggest buyers in the trade market, acquiring a future franchise player in left-winger Martin Havlat, as well as center Bryan Smolinski from the Ottawa Senators in a three-way trade that also involved the San Jose Sharks. The Hawks dealt forward Mark Bell to the Sharks, Michal Barinka and a 2008 second-round draft pick to the Senators, while Ottawa also received defenseman Tom Preissing and center Josh Hennessy from San Jose. Havlat gave the Blackhawks the talented first-line caliber game breaker they desperately needed. The Havlat trade was soon followed by another major trade: winger and key Blackhawk player Kyle Calder was traded to the Philadelphia Flyers in exchange for grinding defensive center Michal Handzus. The move caused a stir in Chicago, as Calder had won an increase in his contract through arbitration, which was accepted by the Hawks, but rather than ink their leading scorer, the team decided to address their need for a proven center by acquiring Handzus. Injuries to both Havlat and Handzus hurt the Blackhawks, and Smolinski was eventually traded at the trade deadline to the Vancouver Canucks. On November 26, 2006, Blackhawks general manager Dale Tallon fired head coach Trent Yawney and appointed assistant coach Denis Savard as the head coach. Savard had been the assistant coach of the team since 1997, a year after he retired as one of the most popular and successful Blackhawks players of all time. The Blackhawks continued to struggle, and finished last in the Central Division, 12 points out of the playoffs. They finished with the fourth-worst record in the NHL, and in the Draft Lottery, won the opportunity to select first overall in the draft. The team had never had a draft pick higher than third overall before, and used the pick to draft right wing Patrick Kane from the London Knights of the Ontario Hockey League (OHL).


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: On September 26, 2007, longtime Blackhawks owner Bill Wirtz died after a brief battle with cancer. He was succeeded by his son Rocky, who drastically altered his father's long-standing policies.


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: Midway into the 2007–08 NHL season, the franchise experimented with a partnership with Comcast SportsNet Chicago and WGN-TV by airing selected Blackhawks home games on television. During the next season, Comcast and WGN began airing all of the team's regular season games. Rocky also named John McDonough, former president of Major League Baseball's Chicago Cubs, as the Blachawks' new president. After taking over the position, McDonough was an instrumental figure in the Blackhawks' current marketing success. Wirtz was also able to bring back former Blackhawks greats Tony Esposito, Stan Mikita and Bobby Hull as the franchise's "hockey ambassadors".


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: In addition to the changes in the team's policies and front office, the younger Wirtz also made a concerted effort to rebuild the team. The Blackhawks roster was bolstered by the addition of Patrick Kane, the first overall selection in the 2007 NHL Entry Draft, who led all rookies in points. Kane and Jonathan Toews were finalists for the Calder Memorial Trophy, awarded to the NHL's best rookie. Kane ultimately beat his teammate for the award. Kane finished the 2007–08 season with 21 goals and 51 assists in 82 games. The Blackhawks finished with a record of 40–34–8, missing the playoffs by three points. The 2007–08 season marked the first time in six years that the team finished above .500.


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: Prior to the 2008–09 season opener, the Blackhawks named 20-year-old Toews as the new captain, succeeding Adrian Aucoin (who was traded to the Calgary Flames, after the 2006–07 season) and making him the third youngest captain at the time of appointment. In addition to a new captain, the Blackhawks made several major roster changes before the season, trading Tuomo Ruutu, their longest tenured player, to the Carolina Hurricanes in exchange for forward Andrew Ladd on February 26, 2008. Later that day, the Blackhawks traded captain Martin Lapointe to the Ottawa Senators in exchange for a sixth-round draft pick in the 2008 NHL Entry Draft. On July 1, the first day of free agency, the team signed goaltender Cristobal Huet to a four-year, US$22.5 million contract, and later signed defenseman Brian Campbell to an eight-year, $56.8 million contract. They also added former coaches Joel Quenneville and Scotty Bowman to their organization.


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: On February 13, 2008, the Blackhawks announced they would hold their first fan convention. On July 16, 2008, the team announced that they would host the 2009 NHL Winter Classic on a temporary ice rink at the Chicago Cubs' home park Wrigley Field on New Year's Day against fellow "Original Six" members, the Detroit Red Wings; the Red Wings defeated Chicago 6–4. On June 16, Pat Foley returned as the Blackhawks' TV play-by-play man, replacing Dan Kelly; Foley called Blackhawks games from 1981 to 2006, and spent the next two years broadcasting for the Chicago Wolves. Foley was partnered with Eddie Olczyk to broadcast all of the Blackhawks' games. On October 16, 2008, the Blackhawks relieved Denis Savard of his head coaching duties and replaced him with Joel Quenneville. Savard has since been brought back to the organization as an ambassador.


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: The Blackhawks finished the 2008–09 regular season in second place in their division with a record of 46–24–12, putting them in fourth place in the Western Conference with 104 points. The Blackhawks clinched a playoff berth for the first time since the 2001–02 season with a 3–1 win over Nashville on April 3. On April 8, with a shootout loss to the Columbus Blue Jackets, the Hawks clinched their first 100-point season in 17 years. The Blackhawks defeated the fifth-seeded Calgary Flames in six games to advance to the Western Conference Semifinals for the first time since 1996. The team proceeded to defeat the third-seeded Vancouver Canucks in six games,<ref name="www.nhl.com/ice/recap.htm?id=2008030246"></ref> and then played the then-Stanley Cup champion, the Detroit Red Wings, for the Western Conference Championship, losing the series in five games.


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: During the 2008–09 season, the team led the NHL in home attendance, with a total of 912,155 spectators, averaging 22,247 per game. This figure includes the 40,818 fans from the Winter Classic at Wrigley Field. Therefore, the total attendance for games hosted at the United Center is 871,337, good for an average of 21,783, which still led the NHL over Montreal's 21,273 average. The Blackhawks welcomed their one millionth fan of the season at the United Center before Game 6 of the Western Conference Semifinals on May 11, 2009.


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: Prior to the 2009–10 NHL season, the Blackhawks made another major free agent purchase, signing Marian Hossa to a 12-year, US$62.8 million contract. The team also acquired Tomas Kopecky, John Madden and Richard Petiot. In early July, general manager Dale Tallon and the Blackhawks management came under fire when the National Hockey League Players' Association (NHLPA) claimed that the team did not submit offers to their restricted free agents before the deadline. In the worst-case scenario, the team's unsigned restricted free agents at the time, including Calder Memorial Trophy finalist Kris Versteeg, would have become unrestricted free agents. Despite the ordeal, the Blackhawks were able to sign Versteeg and all of their restricted free agents before the NHLPA could take further action. On July 14, 2009, the Blackhawks demoted Tallon to the position of senior adviser. Stan Bowman, son of Scotty Bowman, was promoted to general manager. The Blackhawks continued to sell-out games, with the best average attendance of 21,356 over Montreal's 21,273 in the NHL, and had a total of 854,267, excluding the playoffs. The Blackhawks reached the one million mark in Game 3 of the Western Conference Finals against the San Jose Sharks.


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: The Blackhawks re-signed Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews to contract extensions worth $31.5 million over five years, and Duncan Keith to a 13-year extension worth $72 million on December 1, 2009. On April 6, 2010, the Hawks won their 50th game of the 2009–10 season against the Dallas Stars, setting a new franchise record for wins in a season. The next night, the Hawks notched their 109th point of the season against the St. Louis Blues, setting another franchise record.


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: The Blackhawks made the playoffs for the second consecutive season with a regular-season record of 52–22–8. They defeated the Nashville Predators in six games in the first round before defeating the third-seeded Vancouver Canucks for the second straight year, again in six games. The Blackhawks then swept the top-seeded San Jose Sharks in the Western Conference Finals, advancing to the Stanley Cup Finals for the first time since , where they played the Philadelphia Flyers. The Blackhawks prevailed in six games to secure their fourth Stanley Cup in franchise history, and their first since 1961, ending the team's 49-year championship drought.


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: The Blackhawks immediately faced salary cap constraints prior to the 2010–11 NHL season. The team was forced to trade many players who played an integral role to their 2009–10 Stanley Cup victory, including Dustin Byfuglien, Andrew Ladd, Kris Versteeg, Brent Sopel, Ben Eager and Colin Fraser. The team was also unable to agree to terms with starting goaltender Antti Niemi, who left as restricted free agent to the San Jose Sharks. The Blackhawks signed former Dallas Stars starting goalie Marty Turco as his replacement, but eventually turned to rookie Corey Crawford to become their full-time starting goaltender. The Blackhawks also made a mid-season trade to acquire winger Michael Frolik from the Florida Panthers in exchange for Jack Skille, Hugh Jessiman and David Pacan.


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: Amidst the roster turnaround, the Blackhawks finished the season with a 44–29–9 record, and placed third in the Central Division and eighth in the Western Conference. The team's playoff fate was determined on the final day of the regular season. The Blackhawks lost their regular season finale to the Detroit Red Wings, but received the final seed in the Western Conference after the Minnesota Wild defeated the Dallas Stars. In the first round of the 2011 playoffs, the Blackhawks faced the top-seeded Vancouver Canucks, marking the third consecutive post-season the two teams faced each other. The Canucks built a three-game lead in the series before the Blackhawks were able to win three games in a row. Alex Burrows won Game 7 for the Canucks in overtime, 2–1.


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: Before the 2011–12 season, the Blackhawks continued to make roster moves to optimize their salary cap situation. The team traded Troy Brouwer to the Washington Capitals in exchange for the 26th overall pick in the 2011 NHL Entry Draft (used to select Phillip Danault), and traded defenseman Brian Campbell, who had one of the richest contracts in the franchise's history, to the Florida Panthers. The team bolstered their forward depth by signing veterans Daniel Carcillo, Jamal Mayers and Andrew Brunette, while also acquiring goaltender Ray Emery to back up Corey Crawford. The Blackhawks called up prospects Brandon Saad, Andrew Shaw, Nick Leddy, and Marcus Kruger, who became regular starters.


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: The Blackhawks placed fourth in the Central Division with a 45–26–11 record, and qualified for the playoffs for a fourth consecutive season. They faced the Phoenix Coyotes in the opening round, who eliminated the Blackhawks in six games. The series saw five of the six games going to overtime, with Bryan Bickell (game 2) and Jonathan Toews (game 5) scoring the only Blackhawk overtime winners of the series.


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: The Blackhawks started the lockout-shortened 2012–13 season with much success by establishing several new records. On January 27, 2013, they set a new franchise record for starting the season 6–0–0 after a win against the Detroit Red Wings. On February 19, the Blackhawks tied the NHL record previously set by the Anaheim Ducks in the 2006–07 season for earning points in the first 16 consecutive games of a season, and beat the Ducks record (28 points) by one point. On March 6, the Blackhawks extended the NHL record to 24 games with a record of 21–0–3, and the franchise record for most consecutive wins to 11 games. However, they lost 6–2 to the Colorado Avalanche on March 8, their first loss in regulation, which ended their 24-game streak in which they earned at least one point, an NHL record to start a season and the third-longest in NHL history.


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: The United Center also recorded its 200th consecutive combined regular season and playoff Blackhawks sell-out on March 1 against the Columbus Blue Jackets, which began during the 2007–08 season with the game against the Blue Jackets on March 30, 2008. The Blackhawks won the 2012–13 Presidents' Trophy for the best regular season record in the NHL, and clinched home-ice advantage throughout the playoffs. After dispatching the Minnesota Wild in the first round, the Blackhawks faced the Detroit Red Wings in the Western Conference Semifinals. The Blackhawks won the series opener but lost the next three games and faced elimination. However, the Blackhawks clawed back into the series, eventually winning the series on a goal by Brent Seabrook in overtime of Game 7. The team then defeated the Los Angeles Kings in five games to secure a second Stanley Cup Finals appearance in four seasons.


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: The Blackhawks faced the Boston Bruins, another Original Six team, in the 2013 Stanley Cup Finals. It was the first time since 1979 that two Original Six teams had made the Stanley Cup Finals and the first time since 1945 that the last four teams to win the Stanley Cup were in the Conference Finals. The Bruins made their second appearance in the Finals in three years (winning in 2011) and were making a similar resurgence as the Blackhawks. On June 24, the Blackhawks defeated the Bruins in the sixth game of the series to win the Stanley Cup, having overcome a 2–1 deficit with just over a minute remaining in the game. Bryan Bickell and Dave Bolland scored goals with 1:16 and 0:58.3 remaining in the game, just 17 seconds apart, to win 3–2.


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: The Blackhawks began the 2013–14 season in hopes of becoming the first team to win consecutive Stanley Cups since the Detroit Red Wings in 1997 and 1998. The team was dramatically altered in the off-season to remain under the salary cap. The team traded Dave Bolland, Daniel Carcillo and Michael Frolik in exchange for future draft picks, while parting ways with Ray Emery and Viktor Stalberg. Despite these changes, the Blackhawks tallied a 28–7–7 record going into January 2014. The team played their second outdoor game in franchise history, against the Pittsburgh Penguins at Soldier Field, as part of the 2014 NHL Stadium Series. The Blackhawks defeated the Penguins 5–1 in front of 62,921 fans.


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: The franchise recorded its 2,500th regular season win, while head coach Joel Quenneville won 693 wins as a coach, the third most in the history of the NHL. The Blackhawks finished the season with a 46–21–15 record, good for third in the Central Division. They opened the playoffs by losing two games to the St. Louis Blues. The Blackhawks surged back with four straight wins to take the series. The team then defeated the Minnesota Wild for the second consecutive year. However, the Los Angeles Kings defeated the Blackhawks in seven games and ultimately went on to win the Stanley Cup. After the season's conclusion, Duncan Keith won the James Norris Memorial Trophy for the second time in his career, and Jonathan Toews was named a finalist for the Frank J. Selke Trophy.


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: The Blackhawks' roster remained largely intact following the 2013–14 season. The team signed veteran center Brad Richards and rookie goaltender Scott Darling to one-year contracts, and traded defenseman Nick Leddy to the New York Islanders in exchange for three prospects. For the first half of the season, Patrick Kane led the team in scoring and points. The Blackhawks mustered a 30–15–2 record going into the All-Star break. The Blackhawks sent six players to the All-Star Game, including Kane, Jonathan Toews, Duncan Keith, Brent Seabrook and Corey Crawford. The team also played in the 2015 NHL Winter Classic at Nationals Park in Washington, D.C., where they lost 3–2 to the Washington Capitals.


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: However, in late February, Kane suffered a shoulder injury that was expected to sideline him for the remainder of the regular season and much of the playoffs. The team called up rookie Teuvo Teravainen from the AHL, and traded their first-round pick in the 2015 NHL Entry Draft to acquire center Antoine Vermette from the Arizona Coyotes. The Blackhawks also acquired veteran defenseman Kimmo Timonen from the Philadelphia Flyers for second round picks in 2015 and 2016, and Andrew Desjardins from the San Jose Sharks in exchange for Ben Smith. The Blackhawks finished the season with a 48–28–6 record, placing third in their division, and allowed the fewest goals in the NHL.


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: Kane recovered quicker than expected, and was ready for the start of the playoffs. The Blackhawks dispatched the Nashville Predators in six games and swept the Minnesota Wild to advance to the Western Conference Finals for the fifth time in seven years. The top-seeded Anaheim Ducks held a 3–2 lead in the series, but the Blackhawks rallied back in the series to win games six and seven. The team then defeated the Tampa Bay Lightning in the 2015 Stanley Cup Finals to secure their third Stanley Cup in six seasons.


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: The Blackhawks' roster experienced another dramatic reconstruction before the 2015–16 season. The team was unable to come to terms with pending free agent Brandon Saad, who had played a pivotal role in the 2015 playoffs. The Blackhawks traded Saad's negotiation rights (along with prospects Alex Broadhurst and Michael Paliotta) to the Columbus Blue Jackets in exchange for Artem Anisimov, Marko Dano, Corey Tropp, Jeremy Morin, and fourth-round draft pick Anatoly Golyshev in the 2016 NHL Entry Draft. The Blackhawks were unable to re-sign unrestricted free agents Brad Richards, Antoine Vermette and Johnny Oduya due to salary cap constraints. The team then traded longtime veteran and fan-favorite Patrick Sharp (along with Stephen Johns) to the Dallas Stars in exchange for Trevor Daley and forward Ryan Garbutt in order to stay under the salary cap. Amidst the roster turnover, the Blackhawks signed free agent Artemi Panarin from the Kontinental Hockey League (KHL) to an entry-level contract.


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: The Blackhawks' offense was led by Patrick Kane, who scored an NHL-best 106 points in 2015–16 and also won the season's Hart Memorial Trophy as league MVP. Panarin, who skated on Kane's line, won the Calder Memorial Trophy, awarded to the NHL's best first-year player. Midway through the season, the Blackhawks attempted to supplement their roster by making several trades. The Blackhawks dealt Jeremy Morin to the Toronto Maple Leafs in exchange for Richard Panik. The team then reacquired Andrew Ladd from the Winnipeg Jets in exchange for their first round selection in the 2016 NHL Entry Draft and Marko Dano. The team then traded Phillip Danault and their 2018 second round pick to the Montreal Canadiens in exchange for forwards Dale Weise and Tomas Fleischmann. The team finished with a 46-26-9 record, good for 103 points and third place in their division. The Blackhawks were defeated by the St. Louis Blues in a seven-game series in the first round of the 2016 playoffs. The loss marked the Blackhawks earliest playoff exit since 2012.


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: Salary cap constraints forced the Blackhawks to make additional trades before the 2016–17 season. The team traded pending free-agent Andrew Shaw to Montreal in exchange for two second-round 2016 draft picks. The Blackhawks also traded Bryan Bickell and Teuvo Teravaainen to the Carolina Hurricanes in exchange for another 2016 second-round pick in order to free additional salary cap space. The Blackhawks signed veteran Brian Campbell and KHL stand-out Michal Kempny during free agency. The team then turned to their farm system to replenish their depth. The Blackhawks promoted rookies Ryan Hartman, Gustav Forsling, Tyler Motte, Nick Schmaltz and Vinnie Hinostroza to their starting line-up to fill the vacancies left by Shaw, Bickell and Teravainen.


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: Patrick Kane spearheaded the Blackhawks offense with 34 goals and 55 assists, tying for second in scoring during the regular season among all skaters. He was aided by his linemate, Panarin, who scored 31 goals and 43 assists. In addition to Kane and Panarin, Jonathan Toews, Marian Hossa, Artem Anisimov and Richard Panik all scored at least 20 goals. Toews, Kane, Duncan Keith and Corey Crawford were also selected to play in the All-Star Game. The Blackhawks finished the season with 109 points, placing first in the Central Division and earning the top-seed in the Western Conference for the 2017 playoffs. However, they were swept in the first round by the eighth-seeded Nashville Predators in one of the biggest upsets in NHL playoff history; this was the first time that an eighth seed swept a playoff series against the top team in the conference. Goaltender Pekka Rinne and the Predators' defense marginalized the Blackhawks' offense, limiting the team to only three total goals in the series, including a pair of shutouts in Game 1 (1–0) and Game 2 (5–0) at the United Center to begin the series.


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: Prior to the 2017–18 season, the Blackhawks revealed Marian Hossa would miss the entire 2017–18 season due to a progressive skin disorder. The team made two major trades before the 2017 NHL Entry Draft; veteran defenseman Niklas Hjalmarsson was dealt to the Arizona Coyotes in exchange for Connor Murphy and Laurent Dauphin, while Artemi Panarin was traded to the Columbus Blue Jackets to reacquire Brandon Saad in a four-player deal. Both Hjalmarsson and Hossa were core members of the Blackhawks roster that won three Stanley Cups in 2010, 2013 and 2015. The team also traded goaltender Scott Darling to the Carolina Hurricanes and center Marcus Kruger to the Vegas Golden Knights, while also lost defensemen Trevor van Riemsdyk to the Golden Knights in the 2017 NHL Expansion Draft and Brian Campbell, who retired. The Blackhawks acquired wingers Patrick Sharp, Tommy Wingels and Lance Bouma in free agency.


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: The Blackhawks opened the 2017–18 season with a resounding 10–1 victory over the Pittsburgh Penguins. The Blackhawks were four games above .500 with an 18–14–6 record at the end of December 2017, and only four points out of a playoff spot. However, goaltender Corey Crawford missed much of 2018 due to an upper-body injury. Inconsistent defense and goaltending, coupled with limited offense, resulted in the team falling to the bottom of the Central Division. The Blackhawks were eliminated from playoff contention on March 20, 2018, marking the first time in nine years that the team failed to qualify for the Stanley Cup playoffs. The team finished the season with a 33–39–10 record and 76 points in the standings.


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: The Blackhawks made modest acquisitions during the opening day of free agency by acquiring veterans Cam Ward, Chris Kunitz and Brandon Manning. The team made their biggest move of the offseason by offloading Hossa's contract onto the Arizona Coyotes by trading Vinnie Hinostroza, Jordan Oesterle and third-round draft pick in the 2019 NHL Draft in exchange for Marcus Kruger, MacKenzie Entwistle, Jordan Maletta, Andrew Campbell and a fifth-round draft pick in the 2019 NHL Draft. Quenneville named Ward the team's starting goaltender as Crawford missed the first five games of the 2018–19 season with concussion-like symptoms. The Blackhawks opened the season with a promising 6–2–2 start despite Crawford's initial absence. However, after losing their next five games, head coach Quenneville (as well as assistant coaches Kevin Dineen and Ulf Samuelsson) were fired on November 6, 2018. Jeremy Colliton, previously the head coach of the Blackhawks' AHL affiliate, the Rockford IceHogs, was named the 38th head coach in franchise history.


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: The team adjusted their roster by trading Nick Schmaltz to the Arizona Coyotes in exchange for Dylan Strome and Brendan Perlini. The Blackhawks then dealt Brandon Manning to the Edmonton Oilers for Drake Caggiula. The team struggled despite these changes and plummeted to the bottom of the NHL's standings by the All-Star break, but then rebounded with an 18–10–3 record during the second half of the season, and missed playoffs by six points, while finishing in sixth place in the Central Division. After missing the playoffs for the second straight season, the Blackhawks won the third-overall pick in the 2019 NHL Entry Draft at the NHL Draft Lottery, which they used to select Kirby Dach.


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: Prior to the 2019–20 season, the Blackhawks signed center Ryan Carpenter and goaltender Robin Lehner on the opening day of free agency. The team made three separate trades to acquire Olli Maatta, Calvin de Haan, and Alex Nylander. The team reacquired fan-favorite Andrew Shaw in a trade with the Montreal Canadiens. The Blackhawks also inserted rookie Dominik Kubalik into their roster, whom they acquired from the Los Angeles Kings in the previous season. The Blackhawks posted a 32–30–8 record and finished last in their division before the remainder of the regular season was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The team fired John McDonough, who served as the Blackhawks' president for 13 years. The Blackhawks obtained a spot in the 2020 Stanley Cup playoffs, which used a 24-team playoff format among the top 12 teams in each conference. The 12th-seeded Blackhawks defeated the Edmonton Oilers in the qualifying round of the playoffs to advance to the Western Conference first round, where they lost to the Vegas Golden Knights in five games.


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: The 2020–21 NHL season would be delayed to January 2021 and condensed to 56 games due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Blackhawks signed forwards Mattias Janmark, Lucas Wallmark, and Carl Soderberg during free agency to one-year deals. Veteran forward Brandon Saad was dealt to the Colorado Avalanche for defensemen Nikita Zadorov and Anton Lindholm. The team's captain, Jonathan Toews, announced he would forgo the season due to an undisclosed medical illness. The Blackhawks parted with longtime netminder Corey Crawford, who signed with the New Jersey Devils but ultimately retired before the season's start. Brent Seabrook, the team's veteran defenseman, announced his retirement midway through the season due a lingering hip injury sustained in 2019. Andrew Shaw, who previously rejoined the Blackhawks in 2019, also announced he would retire from playing due to concussions suffered throughout his career. The Blackhawks relied heavily on their rookies during the season to replenish their depth, including forwards Brandon Hagel, Philipp Kurashev, and Pius Suter, defensemen Ian Mitchell and Wyatt Kalynuk, and goaltender Kevin Lankinen. Despite the roster turnaround, the Blackhawks completed the first half of the season with a 14–9–5 record and sat in fourth place in their division. The team struggled from mid-March through April, going 8–15–1, and subsequently traded away Janmark, Wallmark, and Soderberg at the trade deadline. The Blackhawks failed to qualify for the playoffs and finished in sixth place with a 24–25–7 record.


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: Prior to the 2021–22 season, former Blackhawks prospect Kyle Beach alleged he was sexually assaulted by Brad Aldrich, the team's former video coach, during the 2009–10 season. Beach filed a lawsuit against the Blackhawks for failing to adequately address Aldrich's wrongdoings or file formal police reports. A separate party, a former high school student whom Aldrich sexually assaulted during his tenure at Houghton High School also filed a lawsuit against the Blackhawks, alleging the team gave a positive reference on behalf of Aldrich and failed to disclose any details about his sexual assault in 2010. The Blackhawks partnered with law firm Jenner & Block to conduct an internal investigation that spanned 139 interviews over four months. It revealed that the team's brain trust, including team president John McDonough, executive vice president Jay Blunk, general manager Stan Bowman, assistant general manager Kevin Cheveldayoff, and head coach Joel Quenneville met just days before the start of the 2010 Stanley Cup Finals and deferred any action on Aldrich until after the Finals. Aldrich was subsequently allowed to quietly resign after taking part in the Stanley Cup victory celebration.


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: Within hours of the report's release on October 26, 2021, Bowman and senior director of hockey operations Al MacIsaac, the only participants in the 2010 meeting still with the Blackhawks, resigned. Assistant general manager Kyle Davidson took over as interim general manager. The NHL also imposed a $2 million fine on the Blackhawks for "inadequate internal procedures and insufficient and untimely response in the handling of matters related to former video coach Brad Aldrich's employment." It also stated that most of the participants in the meeting, including McDonough, Bowman, Blunk, and MacIssac, will not be allowed to work in the NHL again without permission from the league office. Quenneville, by then head coach of the Florida Panthers, resigned after meeting with Bettman on October 28, and will also have to meet with Bettman if he wants to work in the league again. Bettman subsequently met with Cheveldayoff, by now the general manager of the Winnipeg Jets, but cleared him of wrongdoing. Bettman stated that he could not "assign to [Cheveldayoff] responsibility for the Club's actions, or inactions" because Cheveldayoff was not a member of the Blackhawks' senior leadership team at the time. Aldrich's name was removed from the Cup, as requested by the team. Beach and the Blackhawks reached an undisclosed settlement on December 15. However, the second lawsuit filed against the Blackhawks by a former high school student was dismissed.


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: Before his resignation, Bowman intended on building a competitive team that could make the playoffs immediately rather than focusing on rebuilding for the future. The team dealt veteran defenseman Duncan Keith to the Edmonton Oilers in exchange for a draft pick and Caleb Jones. The Blackhawks traded Brent Seabrook's contract to the Tampa Bay Lightning in exchange for center Tyler Johnson. The team then acquired Seth Jones from the Columbus Blue Jackets in exchange for two draft picks and prospect Adam Boqvist. The Blackhawks leveraged their open salary cap to acquire reigning Vezina Trophy-winner Marc-Andre Fleury from the Vegas Golden Knights who were in desperate need of cap relief. The team signed defensemen Jake McCabe and winger Jujhar Khaira in free agency. Blackhawks captain Jonathan Toews, who had missed the previous seasons due to chronic immune response syndrome, also announced he would return for the 2021–22 season.


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: On November 6, Colliton was fired after leading the team to a 1–9–2 record to start the season, the second worst in the NHL at the time. Derek King, former IceHogs head coach, was named his interim replacement. Davidson was formally named the team's general manager on March 1, 2022. The Blackhawks were unable to recover from their poor start and fell out of playoff contention by the trade deadline. The team dealt Brandon Hagel to Tampa Bay in exchange for two first-round picks, Boris Katchouk, and Taylor Raddysh, while also trading Fleury to the Minnesota Wild for a second-round pick. The team finished sixth place in Central Division with a 28–42–12 record. The 2021–22 season also marked announcer Pat Foley's final season with the Blackhawks, who had been with the team for 39 years.


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: On June 27, 2022, the Blackhawks named Luke Richardson as their 40th head coach in franchise history. General manager Davidson announced the Blackhawks would commit to rebuilding their roster and acquiring draft capital. The team traded Alex DeBrincat to the Ottawa Senators and Kirby Dach to the Montreal Canadiens for the 7th and 13th picks in the 2022 NHL Entry Draft. Chicago also acquired the 25th overall pick in the draft from the Toronto Maple Leafs by taking on goalie Petr Mrazek's contract. The Blackhawks made modest acquisitions in free agency, signing veteran forwards Andreas Athanasiou, Colin Blackwell, and Max Domi.


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: The Blackhawks wear predominantly red jerseys featuring three sets of black and white stripes along the sleeves and waist. The team's logo is displayed on the front of each jersey, along with a 'C', representing 'Chicago', on each shoulder with two crossed tomahawks. The Blackhawks debuted this design in 1955, and have since only made minor modifications to the jersey. In 2007, The Blackhawks along with all other NHL teams, made minute changes to their uniforms by adding larger logo, a new collar with the NHL logo and a "baseball-style cut" along the bottom. The team previously donned alternate third jersey that was primarily black with red and white stripes between 1996 and 2007. The Blackhawks brought this design back in 2008, before making their 2009 Winter Classic jerseys their alternates between 2009 and 2011. After the 2019 Winter Classic, the Blackhawks made their jersey from the game their alternate, wearing it for three more games in 2019 and in three games during the 2019–20 season.


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: The Blackhawks' uniform was voted one of the 25 best in professional sports by Paul Lukas of "GQ" in November 2004. "The Hockey News" voted the team's jersey as the best in the NHL. Greg Wyshynski of Yahoo! Sports listed the Blackhawks home jerseys as the second best NHL jersey in the history of the NHL in 2017. The Blackhawks were voted to have the best uniform in the history of the NHL in a fan-vote conducted by the NHL in 2017.


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: Since 2009, the Blackhawks have worn special camouflage jerseys on Veterans Day during their pregame warm-ups. The jerseys are later sold in auctions to raise money for the USO of Illinois.


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: The Blackhawks wore jerseys based on the design worn in the 1936–37 season for the 2009 NHL Winter Classic. The jersey is predominantly black with a large beige stripe across the chest (also on the sleeves), with a red border, and an old-style circular Black Hawks logo. The Blackhawks used this Winter Classic design as their third jersey for the 2009–10 season until they retired after the 2010–11 season, with the only change in the design was by adding the familiar "C" with crossed tomahawks on the shoulders.


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: For the 2014 NHL Stadium Series, the Blackhawks wore a black uniform similar to the alternates they wore from 1996 to 2009, but the stripes around the waist are no longer straight, they are jagged around the sides in order to follow the shape of the bottom of the jersey. Keeping with stripes, the ones on the arms simply stop halfway round; angled numbers are above these sleeve half-stripes. On one shoulder is the familiar "C" with crossed tomahawks logo and the Chicago 2014 Stadium Series logo on the other. Each 2014 NHL Stadium Series jerseys features chrome-treated logo designs inspired by the NHL shield. The chrome crest was developed using new technology that fuses print and embroidery and allows logos to be displayed as a high-resolution image incorporated into the crest. As a result, the design reduces the weight of the crest, creating in a lighter jersey. Numbering on the back of the jersey is enlarged and sleeve numbers are angled to improve visibility in outdoor venues.


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: The team wore a uniform which was inspired by their 1957–58 jersey for the 2015 NHL Winter Classic. This uniform is nearly identical to the road uniform that the Blackhawks currently wear. The main differences between this design and the current road design come in the form of the lace-up collar, the name/number block font (which is serifed), and the C-Tomahawk logo, which is mostly red, black, and white (with a tad bit of yellow) instead of being mostly red, yellow, green black and white.


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: For the 2016 NHL Stadium Series, the Blackhawks wore a unique uniform for their game against the Minnesota Wild. This uniform is primarily white with black/red/black stripes on the sleeves and socks. The current logo is on the chest. Framed between the two black stripes and over the red stripe on the sleeve is the familiar "C" with crossed tomahawks. The collar of the uniform features two different colors. The four, six-pointed red stars from the Flag of Chicago is featured on the white portion of the collar, while the other side of the collar is black. Sleeve numbers have been shifted to the shoulders and enlarged. With the shoulders being black, the numbering is white. But, the numbering and lettering on the back is also enlarged and black in color.


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: For the 2017 NHL Winter Classic, the Blackhawks wore uniforms very similar to what they wore at the 2015 NHL Winter Classic. These new uniforms however feature a few modifications that were made to them. The most notable changes are to the logo and the cross tomahawks. The logo this time is the appropriate logo that the franchise used in 1957–65. But, they removed the roundel and the lettering so that just the logo itself stands out. The placement of the familiar "C" with crossed tomahawks is featured in the same position with the same striping pattern on the sleeve as the 2015 NHL Winter Classic uniform had. The only differences between the tomahawks from the 2015 NHL Winter Classic uniform and the 2017 NHL Winter Classic uniform are where the colors are placed for the tomahawk. The 2017 NHL Winter Classic patch is featured on the right shoulder.


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: To honor the NHL's centennial year, a special anniversary logo was designed for the remainder of the 2016–17 season, which started on January 1, 2017, for all thirty teams, featuring a banner wrapped around the number 100 with the current NHL shield in the foreground. Both the banner and the number 100 are in same silver color as the NHL shield. The Blackhawks wore this logo patch underneath the numbering on the right-sleeve on both the home and away jerseys. The Blackhawks debuted this patch on their home jerseys on January 5, 2017, and then they debuted the patch on the away jerseys on January 13, 2017. All home and away jerseys for all thirty teams will continue to have patches of the NHL's centennial emblem for the 2017–18 season, located above or below the numbers on their right sleeves, for at least up to the playing of the NHL 100 Classic on December 16, 2017.


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: Adidas signed an agreement with the NHL to be the official outfitter of uniforms and licensed apparel for all teams, starting with the 2017–18 season, replacing Reebok. The Reebok Edge template will now be retired in favor of the Adidas' ADIZERO template. The home and away uniforms that were debuted in the 2007–08 season remain nearly identical with the exception of the new Adidas ADIZERO template and the new collar. With the new collar, the NHL shield remains but is no longer placed on a lower layer with flaps nearby, as it's now front and center on a pentagon with a new "Chrome Flex" style. The waist stripes are now curved instead of being straight across. The Adidas logo replaces the Reebok logo on the back collar.


title: Chicago Blackhawks

text: For the entire 2018–19 season, on both the home and away uniforms, the Blackhawks wore memorial patches in remembrance of Stan Mikita, who died on August 7, 2018. The memorial patch featured 21 in white on a black circle that is placed on the upper left corner on the front side of the uniform.