Michael T. Mondak speaks: 40 til 40 day 36

We’ve reached the homestretch of the 40 til 40 blog entry series leading up to Thursday and my 40th birthday.  This is day 36.  This entry is about a curse that affected the Chicago Blackhawks of the National Hockey League for 40 years between 1927 and 1967 called the Curse of Muldoon.  (Keep in mind that the namesake of the curse, Pete Muldoon, was not related to my late friend Dr. Jane Williams, nee Muldoon.)

In 1926, the Chicago Blackhawks played their inaugural season in the National Hockey League.  It was a moderate success, with the forward line of Mickey MacKay, Babe Dye and Dick Irvin each finishing near the top of the scoring race.  However, the Blackhawks were eliminated by the Boston Bruins in the first round of the 1927 playoffs, after which head coach Pete Muldoon was terminated.

It wasn’t until 1943 that a sportswriter for the Globe and Mail named Jim Coleman wrote that Muldoon was terminated over an end of season disagreement with Major Frederic McLaughlin.  Coleman, who died in 2001, alleged that McLaughlin felt the Blackhawks were good enough to finish in first place in the American Division, which at the time was considered to be as much of an achievement as winning the Stanley Cup.  But Muldoon disagreed with the suggestion, and was terminated.  Muldoon was alleged to have said, “Now you will never finish in first place.  I will put a curse on this team that will hoodoo it until the end of time!”

Even though the Chicago Blackhawks won three Stanley Cups during this 40 year span (in 1934, 1938 and 1961), they did so without finishing in first place in either a two division format or a single league format.

In 1967, during the last year of the Original Six era prior to the 1967 expansion, the Chicago Blackhawks broke the Curse of Muldoon 40 years after the hex had been placed with a first place finish.  Following this, Coleman then admitted he made up the story to break up a writer’s block he was suffering from in an attempt to meet a deadline.  Even with this achievement, the Blackhawks would not win the Stanley Cup again until 2010.  (They won the President’s Trophy in 1991 but lost in the Norris Division semifinal to the Minnesota North Stars.)

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