NEWSLETTER
The Blackhawks got busy on Monday, adding a half-dozen bodies to their roster with a flurry of free agent signings. There’s no question the roster for the start of the 2024-25 season, as it stands today, is better than the one that ended last season.
How much better could the Blackhawks be? Are we suddenly talking playoffs? We don’t even know what the line combinations will be in early October when the regular season begins.
But we can start spitballing some potential lines. So let’s do that! Here are some intriguing combinations I could see the Blackhawks rolling out on opening night.
Line One: Tyler Bertuzzi — Connor Bedard — Philipp Kurashev
Bedard scored 22 goals while missing seven weeks with a broken jaw — and being the youngest player in the entire NHL. Kurashev had a career year, scoring 18 times in 75 games. So we’re at 40 goals before adding Bertuzzi’s physical play and ability to score 20+ himself. Could this trio score 70+ combined goals this season? I can see it.
Line Two: Teuvo Teravainen — TBD — Ilya Mikheyev
I really like the speed and versatility of putting Teravainen and Mikheyev together on a line. The big question right now who centers this line? I could see the Blackhawks moving Jason Dickinson up a line or giving Andreas Athanasiou some run at the dot here — that assumes two realities. Have they fully closed the book on Lukas Reichel at center? And does the volume of additions mean younger players like Frank Nazar and Landon Slaggert are guaranteed to be headed to Rockford to start the season? Because Nazar between these two is just sexy. Whether it’s AA or Reichel or Nazar, this line has the potential to score 60 goals this coming season.
Line Three: Taylor Hall — Jason Dickinson — Nick Foligno
Good news: the additions of Bertuzzi and Teravainen mean Hall can slide down the lineup. And, if he gets hurt again, the Blackhawks have plenty of forward options waiting for a spot to play. I think the Dickinson-Foligno partnership works incredibly well in a third line role. Foligno and Dickinson scored 39 combined goals last year. Could this line produce 55-60 goals this coming season? This line could provide some offense and be hard to play against. I like this.
Line Four: Pat Maroon — Ryan Donato — Craig Smith
Smith got buried in Dallas last year and still managed to score 11 goals in 75 games while averaging only 10 minutes per night. Maroon’s season ended prematurely right after he was traded to Boston last year, so having depth pieces available is good; I could see Joey Anderson getting 25-40 games for Maroon here. The Blackhawks tried to move Donato up the lineup but his skills worked best in a bottom-six role. This line could be all sorts of sandpaper to play against — and could combine to get you 30-35 goals.
Spare Parts
Joey Anderson, Lukas Reichel, Andreas Athanasiou, Frank Nazar, Landon Slaggert
This is where things get tricky. What do the Blackhawks do with Reichel and/or Athanasiou? Is one of them your second-line center? Or does Nazar win that job? Both of them has 20-goal potential, which you like to see. But I don’t see either of them being a true second-line center.
Does it all add up?
Last year, the Blackhawks scored an abysmal 178 goals as a team in 82 games. If the Blackhawks can get 60 goals from each of their top three lines, they’re already better than they were last year. If they have five players (Bedard, Bertuzzi, Kurashev, Teravainen, Dickinson) who can score 20+ goals this coming season, that is also already better than last year — and that number isn’t including Hall, Mikheyev, Reichel, Nazar or AA being a 20-goal contributor. This offense could be 30-40 goals better than last year just on face value before we get anything from Hall or AA, much less any young players adding to the offense when they’re ready.
How much better does that make the Blackhawks at the end of the day? If the Blackhawks add 0.50 goals per game (41) to their total from last year, and they get to 2.70 goals per game, that would have ranked… 28th in the NHL this past season. Better? Yes. Playoff bound? Probably not yet.
But, again, we’re looking for incremental improvement from the Blackhawks. They got better in net and their forward group is significantly better than it was last year.
