The Gilmour gamble - Chicago Blackhawks relying on aging center Doug Gilmour - Brief Article

The Blackhawks' season may hinge on 35-year-old center Doug Gilmour, who was imported to breathe life into a moribund offense

For all those fans who wanted Brett Hull in a Blackhawks uniform this season, Doug Gilmour has news for you.

He did, too.

"As I was negotiating, I thought they were looking at him as well," says Gilmour, who was a teammate of Hull's ever-so-briefly a decade ago in St. Louis. "Obviously it didn't happen, but that's not in my hands."

What did happen is that the bidding ran higher than the Hawks had hoped, so G.M. Bob Murray had to make a choice between Hull and Gilmour. Murray chose Gilmour, at three years and $18 million, over Hull, who signed with Dallas for three years and $17 million. In trying to fix his goal-challenged team (only the woebegone Lightning scored fewer goals than Chicago last season), Murray decided Gilmour's creativity would be more valuable than Hull's goal-scoring prowess. Murray also believed the Hawks needed a center more than a winger.

The Blackhawks' 1998-99 season will hinge largely on whether Murray made the right decision. Suppose he did, and that everything breaks right for the Hawks. It will mean their older players-Gilmour, 35; Chris Chelios, 36; Paul Coffey, 37; and Ed Olczyk, 32-will have remained healthy for most of the season and will have used their experience to gut out close games in Chicago's favor. It will mean the Hawks will have played with discipline and intelligence under first-year coach Dirk Graham, making the playoffs as a No. 4 or No. 5 seed in the Western Conference.

But what if Murray is wrong? What if Gilmour's 1997-98 numbers-13 goals, 53 points-were more a result of declining skills than his playing in New Jersey's defense-oriented system? It will mean that age caught up to the Hawks, who will be no faster and no more powerful than they were last season. And they will miss the playoffs for the second season in a row.

The most likely scenario is somewhere in between: an improved offense and the seventh- or eighth-best record in the conference but no real threat to advance far in the playoffs.

What has become clear is this: Even if Gilmour is good, the Hawks may still be bad. But if he's bad, then the team has almost no chance of being good. Chicago is a team without much margin for error. And Gilmour is being counted on for more than just 80 or so points. He is supposed to make his teammates better, too.

The Hawks want him to turn linemates Eric Daze and Chad Kilger into top-of-the-line scorers and reduce the pressure on disappointing center Alexei Zhamnov, who drops to the second line. They want Gilmour to energize the power play, too, and make life easier for Chelios, who felt as if he had to do everything last season.

Oh, and if Gilmour can be a leader, that would be much appreciated.

Gilmour doesn't pay attention to the lofty expectations. He has dealt with them before. After four teams and 15 seasons, he has learned to concentrate on playing hockey.

"That's just my job," he says. "I will go out and produce. I'm not here to show anybody except my teammates."

Gilmour has produced consistently in the past, establishing himself as one of the best playmaking centers of his generation. For eight seasons, from 1986-87 through 1993-94, he never scored fewer than 81 points, an impressive feat when you consider that he accomplished it with three teams-St. Louis, Calgary and Toronto-and various linemates. He helped the Flames win the Stanley Cup in 1989, his first season with the team, and scored 287 points in his first 206 games with the Maple Leafs. He enters this season as the 11th-leading scorer in NHL history among active players.

"Throughout my whole career, I have not regretted one place I have gone," says Gilmour, who broke into the NHL with the Blues in 1983-84. "Wherever I'm sent, I am going to play. I don't say, `It's better here or better there.'"

If he did say those things, the feeling is he would not have many kind words for his last stop, New Jersey. As an offensively skilled center stuck in coach Jacques Lemaire's neutral-zone trapping system, Gilmour saw his numbers drop considerably.

But when asked if he was unhappy last season, Gilmour is quick to deflate a myth. "Not at all," he says. "When you are with a hockey team, you play to that system. We are not here to set personal goals, we're here to set team goals. People say to me stuff like that, but that never bothered me."

The Devils' system worked, at least until the playoffs. Goaltender Martin Brodeur had a goals-against average of less than 2.00 for the second consecutive season, and the Devils were one of the best teams in the league before flaming out in the playoffs.

As fate would have it, Lemaire left when Gilmour did, after last season.

"It's the system that dictates everything," Gilmour says. "In Jersey, with how we played defensively, when we had two or three goals, teams weren't going to beat us."

That won't be the case in Chicago, which scored 33 fewer goals than New Jersey last season and allowed 33 more. The Hawks are in an odd position: a rebuilding team for which the future is now. That's what happens when you add older talent to a disappointing core. In Daze, Kilger and Dan Cleary, the Hawks have their share of young talent, but this season's record will hinge on the play of the older folks.

Just don't call them "older folks." The Hawks occasionally kid each other about their age, but they aren't worried about it.

"Not the way I feel out on the ice," Gilmour says. "I feel it a little bit as far as certain people want to tell me I'm older. You are always going to get ridiculed."

But will the Hawks get ridiculed? Gilmour doesn't think so. This is where he sincerely wanted to play.

"Chicago was always on top of the list," he says. "It's an Original Six team. It was just something where I could help this team.

"It's history, man."

Michael Rosenberg covers the Blackhawks for the Chicago Tribune.

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