Saginaw Hawks
November 20, 2020
The Saginaw Hawks of the International Hockey League were a short-lived farm club of the NHL’s Chicago Blackhawks during the late 1980’s. The team is best known for helping to develop future Hall-of-Fame netminder Ed Belfour along his path to NHL stardom. Chicago signed Belfour as an undrafted free agent out of the University of North Dakota in 1987 and assigned him to Saginaw. He won 32 games that winter and helped Saginaw advance to the semi-finals of the IHL’s Turner Cup playoffs. Belfour would go on to become one of the NHL’s all-time wins leaders among goaltenders and earned election to the Hall-of-Fame in his first year of eligibility in 2011.
