One of the most beloved Chicago Blackhawks skaters from the 1990s is on his way to Hockey’s Hall of Fame.
That was the news on Tuesday afternoon, when Jeremy Roenick was announced as a 2024 Hockey Hall of Fame inductee.
Roenick’s HOF class includes a few other formers foes from the Blackhawks’ Central Division.
Roenick played in 1,363 regular-season games across 20 NHL seasons, tallying 513 goals and 703 assists, good for 1,216 career points — good for 47th all-time. He also appeared in 154 postseason games with 77 points (35 G, 42 A).
He played for five NHL teams but his 524 in Chicago was the highest single-team total, joining the Blackhawks organization as a No. 8 overall draft pick in 1988. He would debut with the team in that 1988-89 season and was up over a point-per-game by ’90-91 with 94 points (41 G, 53 A) in 79 games. He followed that up with three straight 100-point seasons and helped Chicago reached the 1992 Stanley Cup Final.
More than any of those numbers, though, there was a tenacity to Roenick’s game, a fearlessness on the ice that endeared him to Chicago’s fans while those vaunted teams from the early 90s competed with the league’s best. His departure following the ’95-96 season was part of Chicago’s downward spiral into hockey anonymity during the late 1990s and early 2000s, as the Blackhawks went from perennial contender to league-wide irrelevancy.
Need a reminder of what Roenick did in those years? Here’s a good place to start:
That admiration was mutual, too, and it stuck with Roenick years after he left Chicago, as indicated by his inability to contain his emotions while live on the air in 2010 as the Blackhawks celebrated their first of three Stanley Cup victories that decade:
Diving deep into a YouTube vortex or Roenick highlights from his Chicago days can take hours, but if there’s one key place to start, it’s with the final goal scored at the old Chicago Stadium, which Roenick did during overtime against the Toronto Maple Leafs during the 1994 Stanley Cup Playoffs. Astute observers will also recognize the broadcaster handling the postgame interview:
As is often the case when news involving Blackhawks players from prior eras is dropped, one of the best places to consult is the Vintage Hawks Twitter account: