Champs for Charity Good for Players & Fans

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It’s a tough time to be a hockey fan. The ongoing lockout doesn’t seem to be near an end at all, games are being canceled handfuls at a time, and the list of players signing overseas continues to grow.

Despite the lockout, players from around the league have been arranging charity games.  Last Friday, Adam Burish, former Blackhawk (and current San Jose Shark) arranged Champs for Charities at Allstate Arena with an all-star roster that benefitted Ronald McDonald House Charities of Chicagoland & Northwest Indiana – a charity close to the Blackhawks organization.

The game certainly did not disappoint the fans.  If anything, it left us all wanting & longing for more. The all-star roster was split into 2 teams: Team Chicago (all current/former Hawks, except for Joe Corvo) vs. Team World (basically players with no ties to Chicago, except for Daniel Carcillo).

Team Chicago consisted of Patrick Sharp, Andrew Ladd, Jake Dowell, Troy Brouwer, Jamal Mayers, Craig Adams, Adam Burish, Patrick Kane, Jim Vandermeer, James Wisniewski, Brian Campbell, Joe Corvo, Craig Anderson and captained by Jonathan Toews.  Team World was made up of Bobby Ryan, Greg Campbell, Jordan Staal, Daniel Carcillo, Mike Brown, Antti Miettinen, Shawn Thornton, Ville Leino, Jared Boll, Ryan Suter, Alex Goligoski, Tom Gilbert, Niklas Backstrom and captained by Kimmo Timonen.  Robbie Gould, from the Chicago Bears, was the celebrity coach for for Team World and Ryan Dempster, former Cubs pitcher, for Team Chicago.

The game was everything fans wanted: fun, light-hearted and high scoring.  During the 3^rd period Danny Carcillo jumped over the boards of the Chicago bench and started “fighting” with Dempster. The final score was a tie: 15-15.   To determine a winner there was a 5 round shootout with Daniel Carcillo being the final shooter; if he made his shot, World won, if he missed the shootout continued. Carcillo made his shot and proceeded to taunt the Chicago bench at which point Toews jumped over the boards and tackled Carcillo.

In the end, the night was a complete success raising a total of $323,500 for RMHC-CNI –  $73,500 over the initial fundraising goal set for the event – and the fans got to see some of their favorite players hit the ice.  Go here to see the entire set of pictures from the game.

–Alex Chwastek & Grace Sweeney