'Goodbye, Chicago': Scott Darling salutes Windy City in touching piece

In a moving piece posted today on The Players' Tribune, former Chicago Blackhawks goaltender Scott Darling gives an amorous thanks to the city and team he called home growing up, taking readers through his long and colorful voyage from minor-league journeyman to hoisting the Stanley Cup for his hometown team.

Darling, 28, and a draft pick in 2007 of the Phoenix Coyotes, was traded to the Carolina Hurricanes back in April after nearly three seasons as the Hawks' backup to Corey Crawford. He was first called up to the Blackhawks from their AHL affiliate in Rockford, Illinois, in February 2015, and picked up a big win in relief two months later as he became the first Chicago-area native to win a Stanley Cup with the Blackhawks.

But he had to make plenty of stops along the way, and had to overcome some personal struggles with alcoholism, which he details intimately throughout the piece:

The thing about alcoholism is that you never think you have a problem. That's how it gets you. Because it always starts small. For me, it started as a way to cope with social anxiety. Ever since I was a kid, I kind of lived inside my own brain. I was an introvert, and I was so worried about what everyone thought about me at all times. Like if I walked into a room of 100 people, I wanted to make sure all 100 people thought I was cool. I was obsessed with being the best version of myself at all times.

After getting kicked off his college team at the University of Maine, Darling tried his hand at the lower levels of minor league hockey, a journey that took him from Las Vegas to Lafayette, Louisiana; Southaven, Mississippi; and Wheeling, West Virginia, among others.

Exactly three years to the day after checking into rehab on July 1, 2011, Darling's childhood dream came true when he was signed by the Blackhawks. Eleven months after dotting the ink, he was a Stanley Cup champion, a moment he recalls in humorous fish-out-of-water fashion:

I was going to win the Stanley Cup. With the Chicago Blackhawks. I remember thinking, Oh my God. What do I do with my hands?

When the clock hit zero, it was chaos. I was standing at the very back of the line waiting for the Cup, and somebody handed it to me, and I did something that I never do.

I screamed in public.

I let out a huge, awkward roar.

Darling's time in Chicago is going to be an experience he carries with him the rest of his life:

In 40 years, I'll tell my kids about Game 1 against Nashville. I'll tell them what it felt like to lift the Cup. But more importantly, I'll tell them about Johnny [Oduya] and Brent [Seabrook] and Duncan [Keith] and Crow [Corey Crawford] and Kaner [Patrick Kane] and [Andrew] Shaw and on and on. I'll tell them about all the time we spent in hotels, and on buses and airplanes, just talking about hockey, and about life -- and if it was Johnny, probably about life on Mars.

It's a long piece, but well worth the read, on a goalie who's perhaps still to write many vivid chapters on his barnstorming hockey career.

-- Brendan C. Hall