These are not the Blackhawks I grew up watching. Back then, in the 1970s and 1980s, a decade between Stanley Cups would have been something to rejoice over. For years, the team had a far smaller following, in part because Mr. Wirtz’s father, William W., better known here as Dollar Bill for his frugality, would not put home games on television. As recently as a decade ago, the team sold just 3,400 season tickets, and people only half-joke that the place was so empty you could hear players talking to one another on the ice. Today, a waiting list for season tickets is over 15,000.

But when I was a 10-year-old who got to escape to the old Chicago Stadium on Sunday nights with my father, it never dawned on me that the team was lacking for anything. Stan Mikita, whose book “I Play to Win: My Own Story” was tattered in our house from reading and rereading, always glanced in our direction as he took the ice because his wife sat near our seats. Tony Esposito, the goalie known as Tony O, performed puck-defying splits in impossible variations. And Keith Magnuson, the fight-prone defenseman, would thrill with his unwillingness to take guff from anyone, drawing blood and then the team doctors, who sat near us and would scamper down to the ice.

Whatever the Hawks’ record, something about those Sunday nights brought a reliable rhythm to my growing up and a bond with my father over power plays and blue lines. On the nights when it was my turn (my father switched off taking my sister and me), we left for the stadium at the final tick of “60 Minutes”; parked at the Red Top No. 4 lot, where a guy named Larry always took care of us; and made it to Row H in time for the 7:35 p.m. face-off. Coming home along the Eisenhower Expressway, we would listen to the postgame radio show, waiting to hear who was deemed “player of the game.”

Aside from the Jordan era, Chicago is accustomed to losing teams. The Cubs won their last World Series in 1908. Bears fans still live off memories of the 1985 team, the Super Bowl Shuffling champions. Until 2010, the Blackhawks had not won the Stanley Cup since 1961. And the White Sox’s championship in 2005 was the team’s first in 88 years.

My grandmother Betty Davey did not live long enough to see that series, but she was as true a Chicago sports fan as there ever was. She was barely five feet tall in her pumps, but she bellowed at games like Mike Ditka. She taught me how to keep a shot chart during Bulls basketball games listening only to the radio play-by-play.