This Saturday, when the Chicago Blackhawks host the St. Louis Blues, defenseman Duncan Keith will be playing in his 1,000th NHL game. It’s been an incredible career for the 35-year-old Winnipeg native, which has included three Stanley Cups, three All-Star nominations, two Norris Trophy awards and the 2014-15 Conn Smythe. Don’t forget the pair of gold medals won in the Olympics, either.
Keith debuted with the Hawks on October 5, 2005 in a 5-3 loss to the Anaheim Ducks. When he arrived in Chicago, the No. 2 sweater had been out of the Chicago lineup for a few sesasons. In honor of Keith’s 1,000th game this season, we revived our Former Blackhawk of the Week series to remember the two players who wore that number before Keith, who will almost certainly be the last to wear No. 2 for the Blackhawks.
Any guesses on who those players were?
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Get your answers in …
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now. Pencils down.
Deron Quint (2003-04)
Quint played 463 NHL games over 10 seasons with six different teams. He started with the original Winnipeg Jets in the 1995-96 season as a 19-year-old defenseman, playing in 51 games during his rookie year. Quint then followed the Jets to Phoenix as that franchise became the Coyotes and spent the next three seasons in the desert. On March 7, 2000, he was traded to the New Jersey Devils, starting off the nomadic back half of Quint’s career. He was traded to the Columbus Blue Jackets in the summer of 2000, spent two seasons there, then returned to Phoenix for the 2002-03 season via free agency.
During the next summer, Quint signed with the Blackhawks, scoring 11 points in 51 games with a minus-26 rating for a dreadful Chicago team and was the last player to wear No. 2 before Duncan Keith took over after the 2004-05 season was erased by a lockout.
Before Quint’s brief stint in Chicago, a different player wore that number for nearly four seasons in Chicago.
Boris Mironov (1999-2003)
Mironov was a second-round pick of the Winnipeg Jets in the 1992 NHL Draft and spent 65 games with the Jets in his rookie season before being traded to the Edmonton Oilers. Mironov played well enough that season to be named to the NHL’s All-Rookie team. He spent the next five years in Edmonton, playing a total of 320 games for the Oilers.
On March 20, 1999, Mironov was traded to Chicago with Dean McAmmond and Jonas Elofsson for Chad Kilger, Daniel Cleary, Ethan Moreau and Christian LaFlamme. This proved to be a fairly one-sided traded in Edmonton’s favor, as Moreau would go on to spend 11 seasons in Edmonton, ultimately becoming the Oilers’ captain.
Mironov, who’d been one of the top offensive defensemen in the league while in Edmonton, stayed in Chicago for the next 3.5 seasons, appearing in 220 games with 21 goals and 69 assists. But Mironov drew the ire of Blackhawks fans due to his frequent absences from the starting lineup and his reported fondness for the nightlife in Chicago, which, it was believed, started affecting his performance on the ice.
That ended on Jan. 8, 2003, when Mironov was traded to the New York Rangers for a fourth-round draft pick.