Blackhawks' mood feels lighter as 'youthful energy' takes over the roster
VANCOUVER, British Columbia — When a Sharks reporter asked Connor Bedard on Wednesday about his experience on the Blackhawks' young roster this season, Bedard delicately tried to correct him.
“Coming into the season, we were pretty old, actually,” Bedard said. “Not old but older. I guess ‘wise.’ ”
The gist of the question was correct, though, because the Hawks have gotten much younger. When they last visited Vancouver in November, for example, the big storylines were Luke Richardson healthy-scratching Taylor Hall and Seth Jones suffering a foot injury. When they landed in Vancouver again Friday, none of those characters was on the plane.
The Hawks’ average age of 28.0 makes them the NHL’s 10th-youngest team, and that’s with Alec Martinez, Pat Maroon and Nick Foligno still skewing the data. Meanwhile, they have 11 players 23 or younger, plus another three 25-year-olds.
Frank Nazar, Landon Slaggert, Colton Dach, Louis Crevier, Ethan Del Mastro and Artyom Levshunov have been called up from the AHL throughout the season, and Spencer Knight and Joe Veleno were acquired recently. With college prospects Ryan Greene, Sam Rinzel, Oliver Moore and/or Dominic James potentially turning pro soon, that group could expand.
“It makes it a lot of fun when you have guys that are all around the same age who are trying to learn together and grow together,” Bedard said. “Obviously, we want — every year and every game — to keep getting better. Then when we’re all at the point where we’re winning and competing in big games, it’s going to be that much better looking back on this and going through it together.”
This is what general manager Kyle Davidson imagined when he (controversially) decided to move on from Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews in 2023. He wanted the Hawks’ next generation to have freedom to establish their own culture, and that’s happening now.
On Sunday in Denver, they had a lively team dinner. On Wednesday in San Jose, they tried to see the new Captain America movie, but the theater had a power failure, creating a funny story to be told and retold for years to come.
Even in the locker room before and after practices and games, the mood feels lighter. On Monday, Foligno not-so-vaguely attributed that to Jones’ departure, opining about “hard decisions . . . benefitting the group.” But the trend probably stems even more from who has arrived than who has left.
“The guys that come in, they bring energy,” Lukas Reichel said recently. “They’re just having fun. They’re not like, ‘Oh, no, [it’s the] NHL.’ They want to stay here, and they want to be NHL players. That’s what you need.”
Said Slaggert: “There’s definitely a youthful energy in the room. Being able to chirp each other, too, [means] you’re more comfortable. It helps the group as a whole. Guys have other guys their age that can get in their ear, and everyone feeds off that. It creates an environment where everyone is able to speak up.”
Said Crevier: “Before going on the ice, I look around and [think], ‘Oh, I’ve played with these guys before in Rockford.’ ”
The next step for the Hawks, of course, is learning how to win together. They haven’t made much progress on that front yet. Their five-game point streak was momentarily encouraging, but now they’re staring down a winless four-game trip unless they beat the Canucks on Saturday.
That learning-to-win process will take awhile, next season certainly included. And there is the terrifying risk they follow the Sabres’ path and never learn how.
But at least the process has begun. Many of the Hawks’ best prospects haven’t reached the NHL yet, but enough have to make these late-season games seem like glimpses into the future. The players can sense that, too.