The first in a series looking back at the Wolves’ five league championships.
By Chris Kuc and Danny Karmin
As the 1997-98 International Hockey League season progressed, Chicago Wolves players came to the realization that something magical was happening.
“During that season, our team got a little more confident throughout the year and pretty soon you’re getting into January and February, and you’re thinking, ‘hey, we can make a run at the Cup,’ ” forward Chris Marinucci said.
In just the fourth season of the franchise’s existence, the Wolves had developed into a juggernaut that had them on track for a Turner Cup—the first of five league championships throughout the organization’s storied history.
“We grew as a team as that season went on and realized that, ‘hey, we have a special team here,’ ” defenseman Tom Tilley said. “Over the last 20 or 25 games and then certainly when we went into the first round of the playoffs, everybody felt that we had a winning group.”
The key to the run that resulted in the Wolves hoisting the Turner Cup was a roster built by general manager Kevin Cheveldayoff that was stocked with veterans whose sole focus was on winning.
“There wasn’t any complaining about ice time or anything like that,” said Tilley, who was 32 during the ’97-98 season. “We were all grown men, we’d all been around for a while so whatever we needed to do to win we were going to do it as a team.”
Helping keep that focus was legendary coach John Anderson, who was able to mesh the veterans into a cohesive unit that finished 55-24-0-3 in the regular season to capture the first Midwest Division title in franchise history.
Offensively, the ’97-98 Wolves were led by 28-year-old Steve Maltais (46 goals, 57 assists), 25-year-old Marinucci (27 goals, 48 assists), 31-year-old Alexander Semak (26 goals, 35 assists), 25-year-old Steve Martins (20 goals, 41 assists) and Tilley (nine goals, 49 assists). Along with Tilley on the back end, standouts included Bob Nardella (29 years old) and Matt Martin (26). Current Wolves Vice Chairman/Governor Wendell Young was the No. 1 goaltender at age 34.
“We had a lot of really good older players on that team who led the way for us all year,” Martins said. “It was certainly just a great experience getting to know Johnny Anderson, who I thought was one of my best coaches of all time, in terms of how he deals with players and teams that made him the…
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