Roughly half of journalism is waiting for people to call, text or email you back. Another 25 percent or so is having conversations and text exchanges and interviews that really don’t go anywhere. I have a file titled “story ideas” and it might be the longest thing I’ve ever written and the overwhelming majority of it either hasn’t panned out or never will. Ah, well. But even those dead-ends can yield an interesting nugget or two. With that in mind, let’s empty the notebook a month into the season:
The Blackhawks aren’t exactly off to a surprising start. If anything, early wins over Pittsburgh, Toronto, Vegas and Florida is more than anyone could have reasonably expected from a team in its first post-tank season. A 4-7-0 record translates to a 59-point pace, which is exactly what the Blackhawks finished with last season when they had the likes of Patrick Kane, Jonathan Toews and Jake McCabe for most of the season. And given the absurdly difficult schedule the Blackhawks have had — second-hardest in the league, after only poor San Jose — things could be a heck of a lot worse.
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Which is why it was notable that the Blackhawks veterans called a players-only meeting after a rather run-of-the-mill loss to the New Jersey Devils on Sunday night. Especially considering it came one night after a solid victory over the Florida Panthers. But this is why general manager Kyle Davidson brought in well-traveled and well-respected guys like Nick Foligno and Corey Perry — to set not just a tone, but a standard. It’s all part of the rebuilding process. During the COVID-19-shortened season, when the Blackhawks first dabbled in a rebuild, Kane frequently talked about staving off a “losing culture.” It’s not easy.
“I remember my first couple years, some of these meetings happened, and you hope that it sticks with you,” Seth Jones said. “You hope that it makes you not change the way you think or play the game, but understand that you have a role on this team. … It’s not mother-effing guys and things like that, but if you make a mistake, your teammate should be able to tell you when you’re wrong, and vice-versa.”
“Accountability” was the biggest buzzword on Sunday night. That doesn’t mean just doing your job because it’s your job, but doing your job because it makes everyone else’s job easier. No passengers, as they say. Sunday’s meeting wasn’t some defining moment, or anything all that dramatic. It was just a step in the process — a necessary one when four or five rookies are playing every night.
“That’s the brotherhood,” Perry said. “You’re not putting anybody down, that’s not what we’re here to do. That wasn’t the message. It’s more being brothers and being able to talk about it and figure it out as men. That was the message: We’re a team in here, we’re brothers. It’s not to put anybody down, it’s to make everybody better.”
You’ve probably noticed the scar below Kevin Korchinski’s right eye, a horizontal black line about an inch long. It’s the product of a stray stick Korchinski was hit with during Game 1 of the Western Hockey League conference finals last spring. A Kamloops player caught him up high, and since it was the third period of a playoff game, Korchinski didn’t go back to the locker room for full repairs, which might explain why the scar doesn’t appear to be fading at all more than six months later.
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“It was the start of the third period of Game 1, so I couldn’t really go off,” Korchinski said. “It wasn’t really bleeding-bleeding, but they kind of rubbed some stuff on it and we just waited till the end of the game. By the end of the game, it already got messed up, so we stitched it up. It’s whatever. We won the game, so that’s all that really matters.”
If anything, Korchinski was grateful his wound was only skin deep. Three of his Seattle Thunderbirds teammates had their teeth chipped by high sticks over the course of the season, including Coyotes prospect Dylan Guenther that same game.
“So I was lucky just to get a little scar and not lose my teeth,” Korchinski said. “I’ll take that any day.”
I once had a boss who said the lowest form of sports journalism is a story about the schedule, but I can’t help it. Let’s talk about that schedule a little more for a moment. Fourteen of the Blackhawks’ first 16 games are against teams that harbor legitimate playoff aspirations; 11 against teams that can realistically say they’re competing for a Stanley Cup this season. Boston twice. Vegas twice. Florida twice. Tampa Bay twice. Toronto (coming up again later this month). Colorado. New Jersey. It’s almost comically difficult.
“It’s definitely a tough schedule, but I like it,” Lukas Reichel said. “I like a start like that. The first road trip helped us come together as a team a little bit, and now it’s a lot more good teams. It makes you stay sharp and ready.”
Things ease up a little bit around Thanksgiving. But a frontloaded schedule doesn’t mean the back half will be solely against bottom-feeders. According to our Dom Luszczyszyn, the Blackhawks’ remaining schedule is still the 14th hardest in the league (as of Monday night), with their opponents projected for an average of 91 points.
Every time Bedard spends an extra hour on the ice after a practice working on his shot, all of us armchair sports psychologists start wondering if he’s doing too much, working too hard, putting too much pressure on himself at too young an age. Perfection is unattainable, after all. And Richardson has made it clear to Bedard that he wants him to loosen up and have more fun sometimes.
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Some of that falls on the veterans, brought in not only to help Bedard on the ice, but off the ice, too. How do those veterans keep things light in such a high-pressure environment?
“I’ve never been asked that question,” Jones said. “I don’t know. He just puts a lot of pressure on himself because he wants to win. That’s true for all of us; you’re not happy with an average game or a good game, you always want more. You play a good game, but you’re always thinking about the one or two bad plays you made, kicking yourself over it. I know he wants to play a perfect game, but in this league, it’s hard. Everyone’s an NHLer and everyone can skate and play. It’s not going to be perfect all the time for him. After his first (preseason) goal (an empty-netter), I was talking to him on the way out of the game and I said it must feel good to put the first one in the net. He said, yeah, but he wanted to do it a different way. I said, trust me, one day you’ll be begging for those.”
It’s easy to draw comparisons between Bedard and Toews, whom Brent Seabrook dubbed Mister Serious before he became Captain Serious at the ripe old age of 20. In those early years, Toews never seemed to be happy with his play. He’d fume on the bench after a bad shift, and often take it out on his linemates. And he took his work home with him, continuing to stew well into the night, to the point it affected his sleep. It took years — and multiple Stanley Cups — before he really started to take it easier on himself.
It’s a tough way to live. And as great as Toews’ singular drive made him, the Blackhawks don’t want Bedard to go too far down that path.
“A hundred percent, I’m already trying to tell him that now,” Jones said. “You can’t go home and think about it. You do go home and watch shifts or whatever, but if you come to the rink the next day in an 82-game year and you’re still thinking about a couple bad shifts the night before, it’s really hard to turn it over and get ready for the next game. You just have to move on to the next one. It’s a long season. If we have 10 bad games in a year out of 82, that’s not bad, you know? You just have to stay positive.”
Here’s the thing about Bedard, though: That extra work? That is his fun.
“It’s just fun to play hockey,” he told me last week in a rare quiet conversation. “Whether it’s a game or it’s a practice, I just love being out there.”
GO DEEPER
Relentless NHL grind just another day at the office for Connor Bedard
Andreas Athanasiou entered training camp as the presumptive second-line center, having found a home — and a productive one, at that — as the pivot for Reichel. The duo combined for 12 goals and 18 assists from the trade deadline until the end of the season, with Athanasiou far and away the Blackhawks’ leading scorer in that time with 18 points. It helped the itinerant forward earn a two-year contract worth $4.25 million a season.
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Then camp opened, and Reichel was at center. Then Athanasiou got sick. Then, when he re-entered the lineup, it was as a fourth-liner. He’s been up and down the lineup ever since, even getting scratched in Las Vegas. And Philipp Kurashev, who was the most productive right winger for Reichel and Athanasiou, is now entrenched on Bedard’s line. Athanasiou has played just 54 minutes with Reichel, and they’ve been outscored 3-0 together, with an expected goals share of just 42.27 percent. Athanasiou has no goals and four assists on the season, averaging just 13 minutes, nine seconds of ice time per game — lowest among the lineup regulars. During his torrid closing stretch last season, he averaged 16:54.
“It’s part of the game, part of the business,” Athanasiou said. “There are so many factors that come into it and so many moving parts, and you never know what’ll happen on any night. It’s just about being ready to play. Every single guy comes in with the same mentality. There are so many good players in this locker room that play so well with so many different guys. Anyone can play on any line on any night. That’s not up to me. All I can do is be ready whenever I’m called on, so I can go out there and do the best I can for the team.”
After scratching him, Richardson said they needed “more” out of Athanasiou, for him to use his game-breaking speed better. He was quick to point out that didn’t mean being risky, just more aggressive.
“I really value him and think he’s a great NHL player,” Richardson said. “But if you’re not playing at the top of your game, then you’re not you, so we want someone else to have an opportunity. That’s the message to everybody.”
Limited minutes can often lead a player to try to do too much, rather than let the game come to him. It’s something Athanasiou has been mindful of as he awaits his next chance to play a top-six role.
“You want to help as much as you can, but sometimes when you try forcing things, it doesn’t work out in the right way,” he said. “Just keep it simple and keep the intensity up. Work hard.”
Some interesting stat shots from the new NHL Edge tracking system.
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• No surprise here, but Athanasiou is in the 97th percentile with his top speed of 22.99 mph, and 94th percentile with his 29 speed bursts over 20 mph. Perhaps a little surprising: He’s also in the 94th percentile for top shot speed, with a 95.35-mph blast.
• Bedard is in the 94th percentile for skating distance. He’s skated 36.44 miles in 11 games. The average for forwards is a mere 22.21. It still pales in comparison to Jones, who’s in the 98th percentile with 39.46 miles logged from the back end.
• Korchinski is known for his smooth skating, but he’s below average in both top speed (20.83 mph) and speed bursts over 20 mph (five). He does have 63 bursts between 18-20 mph, however, which puts him in the 74th percentile. That seems to be his sweet spot.
• Reichel’s elite skating is evident when you watch him, but the numbers bear it out, too. He has 94 speed bursts between 18-20 mph (96th percentile), and 28 between 20-22 mph (95th percentile).
• Not surprisingly, both Petr Mrazek and Arvid Söderblom are in the upper tier in terms of high-danger shots faced. But both have fared well against such shots — Mrazek has an .818 save percentage on them, while Söderblom has an .825, both well above the league average of .785.
By the rules of the official hockey nickname, Connor Bedard is “Bedsy.” And you’ll hear that from his teammates once in a while. But mostly, they just call him “Connor.” Richardson calls him “Connor” in his press scrums. So do most of his teammates. Heck, the Blackhawks social media team has simply called him “Connor” in posts several times, like a mononym usually reserved for a soccer player.
Here’s the problem: The longest-tenured Blackhawks player (by far), an alternate captain and team leader, is also named Connor. How does he feel about all this?
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“He has more media coverage in a week than I’ve had in my whole life,” Connor Murphy said with a laugh. “I think he’s earned ‘Connor.’”
(Top photo of Corey Perry and Connor Bedard: Melissa Tamez / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
