Andrew Shaw will make his last first stride onto United Center ice Thursday.
The fan favorite and permanently one-of-a-kind Blackhawk will be honored pregame before the Hawks face the Canadiens, his other former team.
Eleven months since his last game and nine months since he announced his unofficial retirement due to repeated concussions, the ceremony will finally give Chicagoans an opportunity to send him into his post-hockey life in style: with a roar. And he already knows that sound will unleash a flood of nostalgia.
“I’m sure it’ll be a rollercoaster of emotions: excitement, happiness, even a little sadness,” Shaw said Wednesday. “You get 10 great years out of hockey, playing in the NHL for two great organizations, winning two Stanley cups. Not it all being taken from you, but not being able to do that [anymore], it’ll be emotional. But I look forward to it.”
Shaw, now 30, has spent the past year almost exclusively with his family — particularly his 3-year-old daughter Andy and soon-to-be 2-year-old son, Dax — back home in Belleville, Ontario.
He’s a family man now. He hasn’t pursued an off-ice hockey job in coaching, scouting or managing — a career path he sounded interested in on his retirement day last April — because he doesn’t want to “drag them around from city to city.” Instead, he has taken up cooking, smoking meats and vegetables and “trying new things here and there.”
“Just to be there to experience [my kids’] firsts for everything is very special,” he said. “I love it. I enjoy making them smile, laugh, play and just teaching them life skills.”
That’s not to say he doesn’t miss hockey, because he does. He has helped mentor a few young players around Belleville but yearns to resume playing himself. His 544-game career was satisfying for its achievements but unsatisfying in its length.
Indeed, if not for Shaw’s infectiously positive outward persona, which tends to create a glossy mirage of carefreeness wherever he goes, the way repeated concussions so prematurely derailed his career might be seen as one of the greater tragedies in recent Hawks history.
“It’s obviously sad,” Patrick Kane said. “But at the same time, you’re happy for him — [and] happy for his family — that he’s able to stop playing a game and make that hard decision and hopefully have a better life for it.”
Shaw said he feels “great” physically — he still works out five days per week — but only “pretty good” mentally, implying his brain still hasn’t fully recovered from its decade of trauma. He thanked the Hawks medical staff for continuing to give him “everything that I need to get better,” but his mental recovery could be a lifelong process.
It’s easier and more appealing for him to think about all the good times, though — about antics with teammates, and iconic goals and fights during playoff runs, and the sense of fulfillment every time he met an adoring fan and brought “some sort of joy to their life.” Thursday should provide a fitting final reminder of what all of that felt like.
And just as reminiscing on his prime years brings Shaw’s signature grin back to his face, so it does for Kane, too.
“The best thing about him was he never really changed from the moment he came into the locker room [as a rookie],” Kane said. “He was always having fun, excited to be around the guys, excited to be playing hockey. He was just always that young, energetic kid.”
Notes: Top Hawks prospect Lukas Reichel is expected to make his much-anticipated NHL debut Thursday after Shaw’s ceremony. Reichel was called up to the taxi squad Wednesday and centered the first line between Patrick Kane and Dylan Strome in practice.
Erik Gustafsson was removed from COVID-19 protocol Wednesday, reducing the Hawks’ COVID list to four players and two staff members.
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