NEWSLETTER
On Saturday, a dozen Blackhawks players spoke with the media about a wide range of topics as they closed the books on the 2023-24 season. From personal performance assessments to team consistency, a lot was covered. And each player had a unique perspective.
There will be more that comes from the players’ comments to end the year, but there were a few perspectives that stood out. Here are a few I thought were noteworthy:
“When you’re my age or Nick [Foligno]’s age, you want to win, and it’s frustrating when you’re not able to do [anything] about it. Obviously there’s different expectations when it comes to management and when it comes to the player. We want to see results now. We’re not as patient as they are. We don’t play this game forever. They’re in the game a lot longer than we are. That is a tough thing to balance, not getting frustrated at mistakes that are going to be inevitable with a young team. That’s another challenge that we personally have to deal with. I know the leadership group did too. It’s not easy, I’ll tell you that. A lot of sleepless nights. Trying to come to the rink with a positive attitude when you can. Doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to be happy, which we shouldn’t be happy that we’re losing. Trying to stay positive and learn from this process.”
“Perspective is key. It’s really easy to look at your timeline of your career or your own interests. Everyone has interest in winning — winning the Cup and going to the playoffs — but sometimes you think of more when you were that age. … My first year I didn’t feel like I even belonged. … Those lessons I learned then helped me a lot today. I do know the older guys on that team I was on, that they were ticked off — and they would let me know — about certain guys getting ice time or certain things were happening that were losing or were causing big mistakes. Because they wanted to win; they were at the end of their careers. You understand their perspective and I am now grateful that I had those years. For our young guys now, the perspective of being a little older and realizing those are vital years, as hard as it is to see a silver lining with some of this stuff, it’s only going to breed learning and lessons that guys can take forward into winning seasons. Each guy will be able to look back and have a bad taste of this year and last year, but hopefully look at it like there was a lot of reward and lessons learned to take into successful careers following.”
“Listen, I’m a competitor, we all are in that room, and when you play this game this long and you see the abilities of what a great season can feel like, or just a season where you really feel like you’ve taken steps, it drives you. There’s years where, like this one, where it just feels like we took a step forward and two steps back sometimes. And I think that’s what frustrated me with this group, is that you could see promise and we just didn’t sustain it enough. And so I would get a little frustrated with that. Because you knew it was in there. And then I was talking about it. It’s a mindset, it truly is a mindset of are you willing to do what’s necessary and what’s asked of you by the team? Not what you maybe want to do, but what the team needs you to do each and every night? I think that’s where we had to grow and get better. And you saw some guys do it. And some guys, honestly, it’s not that no one wants to do it, I just think some guys just didn’t know how, right? Like we had a lot of guys come up that had to play in different roles, we had a lot of new faces, young kids that have never experienced the NHL. It’s a hard league, and I think that’s where we kind of fall in the trap of, like, what our expectations were and what the reality was. And I think that’s kind of where we got caught this year is that I’m always going to expect more, I think that’s the only way you get better, and I’m sure a lot of guys in that room feel the same way, but the reality was we had a lot a lot of unforeseen circumstances, and I’m aware of that, but I’m never going to use that as an excuse. I’m not going to allow that to be the narrative here. I’m going to say, ‘OK, what could we have done in that instance? How can we move forward in regards to that?’ And I think that’s how you build a culture and a winning culture.”
“I was hoping to be a guy in college that others could learn from, and I’m on the opposite end of that here I’m learning from other guys. So it is cool to have both the experiences in such a short time frame like you said. I think it is unique to be on the other side of it because it’s so special because my time at Notre Dame being the captain, being the leader was so valuable for me and my development both on and off the ice so I think to be on the other end of that and learning from these guys is so special. Honestly, it’s been a great experience learning from Nick Foligno, [Jason] Dickinson, and [Tyler] Johnson. I think they’re great human beings and great leaders so to take a step into a room like this and to learn from them is pretty special.”
Obviously there were some tough games where it’s hard to kind of, not keep playing, but where you just feel like you’re making mistake after mistake, so I think that’s just kind of working on that mental side of the game, I think that’s a big thing compared to junior where we didn’t have to worry about that. We were a really good team, and I think this year there was a lot of tough nights where I wasn’t playing good or whether I did play good, kind of managing the ups and downs and just working on managing those so that whether I play good, the team plays good the night before, I play good the night before or bad or the team plays bad, I can show up the next day with the same attitude that I want to and kind of impact the game how I want.
“It’s never easy to get sent down. I remember being pretty upset about it, but looking back now, it’s a decision that was made in the best interest of where I could get to and to improve my development and I’m very happy with the results. I think I gained a lot of confidence. I kind of got a pretty big leash there luckily and I was able to do what I wanted and push things and see what I could get away with and that was huge for me coming into this year, it kind of made me feel confidence about my skillset and where I was at.
“I remember talking to Wyatt Kaiser earlier in the year, he had asked me a question about it. I kind of said the same thing to him, it was a great experience for me. I said it’s never easy to go down there but sometimes, it kind of seems like 90 percent of guys in the NHL have probably played in the AHL or something like that, so everybody goes through it, everybody does it, it’s nothing to be sad about or ashamed about, it’s a good time for you to work on your skills cause when you get here, it’s less of a development league, you come here to perform — and obviously you’re going to improve you game but it’s a different schedule, you’re playing every other night so you don’t have those opportunities to really work on your skillset like you do in the AHL, where you have a couple practices in a row most of the time in a week, so you have a lot of opportunity to grow there.”
