Well... I'm about 50/50 here, as I actually started paying attention to hockey when I was legally an Indiana resident. I'm from Central Illinois, but was raised there at a time when the team was obviously not on TV and my dad had long since sworn off the team as long as Bill Wirtz was running the show. So, I had literally zero hockey upbringing or attachment to the Hawks, despite being a diehard Cubs fan and a mild Bears fan.
And I didn't start paying attention to hockey until I was a college student at a small liberal arts college in southern Indiana. Was planning brotherhood events for my fraternity one day, and a bunch of them suggested we go to a USHL Ice game in Indianapolis. I figured, hey... What the hell, why not? Went not expecting much, but to my shock ended up loving the hell out of it and started watching the handful of NHL games we got on campus a week.
So, I was in a conundrum... I wanted to start following hockey, but I wanted to follow a team I could actually watch. Hawks still weren't on TV, and I was loathe to the idea of rooting for a St. Louis team, so I was stuck wondering what to do. Then, literally as this thought process was going on during the offseason after I started following the game, Bill Wirtz died, rumblings about the Hawks being put on TV started immediately, and I figured my problems were solved and decided to be a Hawks fan. Went to my very first NHL game that December of 2007, graduated from college the following May, ended up getting a job in the Chicagoland area that summer, and have been up here ever since.
Almost freaky to imagine that had I started following hockey a year earlier or Bill Wirtz had lived a year later, I might very well be a fan of a different team. Probably not the Blues, but possibly the Wild or Jackets, as I was looking mostly at Midwestern teams, if memory serves.