Once again, we at Hockeenight have the distinct pleasure and honor of featuring the one and only Slats Radke as a contributor. As you may recall, Slats covered professional hockey for the Chicago American throughout the 1960s and early 70s. He has agreed to offer his unique insight upon occasion. So, with no further ado, Slats Radke:

So the young Blackhawks begin their series with the boys from Detroit. There are four teams left playing, which is really something, considering there were four teams playing when the playoffs started back in my day, and then it didn't always follow that the Blackhawks would play Detroit, since they would sometimes play Toronto, and even played Detroit for the Stanley Cup back in 1961, so there was that.

These boys have been making all of The City Of Broad Shoulders proud. They skate hard, play until the final horn sounds, and aren't even afraid to mix it up. They're going to need that when they play these Detroit boys. Back when it was the Golden Jet, Stosh, Swoop and the rest, they would have to mix it up pretty well with the Wings, who had Gordie Howe, and he had enough toughness in him for a whole team, and most of the other guys as well.

These boys, especially that big Indian boy Bufflin, they like putting the body on fellows. They've been playing hard, and they must be practicing hard too, since none of them look like they've been taking the time or energy to shave, except the little kid with the curly blonde hair, who the girls seem to like and he knows it, since he's been shaving ever night and you can tell, since he's the only boy out there without a beard.

These Detroit boys who have all the foreigners won this Cup last year, and they've won it a few times lately, and that's something considering they won it back in '55 and didn't win it again until they loaded up the squad with Communists 40 years after that, and wouldn't old J. Edgar Hoover have hated to see all those Communists skating around on American ice when he hated Communists so much back when he was alive.

The meatheads who ask me to write, and I appreciate they give an old typewriter jockey like me a chance to write about the Hawks again, asked if I wanted to go to a ginmill with them and meet some of the boys who read what old Slats has to write. Well, I'd love to go, but you know it's so far from Elmwood Park into Logan Square, which is where I used to like to go to get stuffed cabbage and pierogis before heading down to the Stadium with a pocket full of cigars and the Green Sheet, and you can't even have a cigar with your Rock & Rye in a bar anymore like a man, which is how I used to like it when I'd go to the Millionaires' Club for a good steak dinner.

So these young Blackhawks are going to go up against the foreigners from Detroit, and I'm sure they'll give it a game effort, win or lose but hopefully win, since that's what we need here since it's been such a long time, and we don't even call ourselves Hockeytown like the other place does, and they've won it already so it's only for that the Blackhawks get a chance to get their names on it too, even though if they don't win it this year you can tell these boys are young and it's just a matter of time until they do win sooner or later, but hopefully sooner.

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