{"id":8296,"date":"2016-02-19T09:02:01","date_gmt":"2016-02-19T17:02:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/obama-honors-blackhawks-for-stanley-cup-hat-trick\/"},"modified":"2016-02-19T09:02:01","modified_gmt":"2016-02-19T17:02:01","slug":"obama-honors-blackhawks-for-stanley-cup-hat-trick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/sports\/obama-honors-blackhawks-for-stanley-cup-hat-trick\/","title":{"rendered":"Obama honors Blackhawks for Stanley Cup hat trick"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>WASHINGTON \u2014<\/strong> President Barack Obama on Thursday celebrated his hometown Chicago Blackhawks for winning another Stanley Cup, calling the team\u2019s third title in six years an \u201camazing championship run.\u201d But he\u2019s still hoping one of the Windy City\u2019s other professional teams, including his beloved Bears, will earn a trip to the White House before his presidency ends.<\/p>\n<p>Obama took credit for the Blackhawks\u2019 performance, noting that it had gone nearly a half century without winning the NHL trophy before he took office.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNow you\u2019ve got the hat trick, so I think it\u2019s pretty clear the kind of luck I\u2019ve brought to this team,\u201d Obama said, surrounded by players in the East Room.<\/p>\n<p>Chicago won its third title in six seasons by defeating the Tampa Bay Lightning in six games last June. Its previous titles came in 2010 and 2013<\/p>\n<p>An avid sports fan, Obama credited the team\u2019s strong performance to the front office. \u201cIt is also, by the way, a tribute to the head of scouting, who just told me that he could help me pick my Supreme Court justice,\u201d Obama joked. \u201cHe volunteered. He said \u2018I know what I\u2019m doing.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Obama is currently considering whom to nominate to succeed Justice Antonin Scalia, who died Saturday.<\/p>\n<p>Obama noted that seven players participated in all three championships, but singled out \u201cunsung heroes\u201d in goalie Scott Darling and Kimmo Timonen.<\/p>\n<p>He noted that the Blackhawks have raised more than $2 million for nonprofit organizations that help Chicago children and families. The team also brought wounded service members who had been patients at the Walter Reed military hospital to the White House for Thursday\u2019s ceremony.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThank you for the good work that you are doing as an organization, on and off the ice,\u201d Obama said. \u201cIt would be nice &#8230; if you just squeeze one more in there before I leave, because then I definitely will take credit for this amazing championship run. I haven\u2019t given up hope on the Bulls or the White Sox or the Bears. Heck, I\u2019d even take the Cubs.\u201d Obama is a White Sox fan.<\/p>\n<p>Among the gifts he received from the team was a parking pass to United Center, the Blackhawks\u2019 home ice.<\/p>\n<p>Obama said it was the best gift he\u2019d ever received at the White House and joked that \u201cI might sell this on eBay.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>WASHINGTON \u2014 President Barack Obama on Thursday celebrated his hometown Chicago Blackhawks for winning another Stanley Cup, calling the team\u2019s third title in six years an \u201camazing championship run.\u201d But he\u2019s still hoping one of the Windy City\u2019s other professional teams, including his beloved Bears, will earn a trip to the White House before his [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":8297,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":6,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-8296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8296"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8296\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8296"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=8296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}