The Blackhawks development camp continues this week, and we’ll be back at the rink to chat with Rockford IceHogs head coach Anders Sorensen and assistant general manager of player development Mark Eaton later today. We’ll see if the Blackhawks have any more moves up their sleeve before the Fourth of July hits; the trade market is still hot as free agency starts to cool off. Blackhawks GM Kyle Davidson will speak with the media on Friday.
Tuesday was relatively quiet — relatively because Monday was bananas — but there was still a lot going on around the league. So I unloaded a lot of non-Blackhawks focused notes into something earlier this morning. The Blues were surprisingly active yesterday, including becoming the first team to sign a 2024 draft pick.
This poked around in my brain on Monday as the news alerts and text messages were flying around all morning and I’m thankful Ben Pope found the quote and tweeted where my mind was at. It’s almost like the leader in the room said something about roster construction and the front office heard it…
Some fans have been asking about the Blackhawks’ likelihood to make a deal for Ottawa center Shane Pinto, who was headed to RFA this summer and reportedly asked for a trade (which was later refuted, but only to the extent that he hasn’t formally asked out but wouldn’t be mad if they traded him and wanted a change of scenery). He signed a two-year deal for a nice number for a potential acquiring team on Tuesday. If that’s the commitment and he’s still available, I would be very interested now for the Blackhawks.
Really good story here from Ben for the Chicago Sun-Times on the impact of stocking the NHL roster with veterans for the coming season on the pipeline. As he points out, the filled NHL roster likely means most of the young players will be in Rockford for some/most/all of the coming season to develop. And that’s the point: the organization wants them to appropriately develop. And the new front office is (gasp!) actually using Rockford to develop players. Alex Vlasic is the face on the poster of that pipeline path, and the front office and coaches hope more young players benefit the way he did. Here’s what Luke Richardson said Monday about letting players come up when they’re actually ready for the NHL:
“You can’t just bring up all young guys when they’re not ready,” coach Luke Richardson said Monday. “The idea for Rockford is to develop. If you pull them out of that too early, it’s hard. It takes them out of their timeline and sometimes puts them back even further behind.”
Speaking of heading to Rockford — or East Lansing — Scott Powers wrote about the looming decision with the Blackhawks’ top draft pick, defenseman Artyom Levshunov. He’s got a couple options, even if the NHL roster isn’t likely available at this point.
Since we’re losing CapFriendly at the end of this week (F the Capitals), we need to get familar with the fine work they do at PuckPedia. They started loading up the new deals in the last day or so, and they noted that apparently the Blackhawks gave Teuvo Teravainen an eight-team no trade list. For what it’s worth, CapFriendly doesn’t have a M-NTC next to his contract at this point. That’s 24 fewer than the Bowman Standard Operating Procedure.
I’m going to do my best to keep y’all updated with where the 2023-24 Blackhawks are playing next year until they’re all signed and it’s July 6 and they’re gone and (though not forgotten) no longer part of the team so not part of my news cycle any more.
ICYMI yesterday, the NHL released the full regular season schedule on Tuesday.
Finally, I am absolutely, positively always going to be here for young players getting their flowers when they succeed. Connor Bedard should have been an all-star last year (Jason Dickinson should have replaced him… I digress), the Bears are going to roll out with Caleb Williams under center and Rome Odunze outside this fall and the Bulls are going to… be… the Bulls. Today, I’m choosing to celebrate Angel Reese being named a WNBA All-Star last night. She’s a winner and she’s making her doubters look like fools every night right now. I love to see it!
NEWSLETTER
