Three Players To Watch As The Blackhawks Season Comes To An End

The Chicago Blackhawks have been a hard team to watch recently, but there are still players to keep an eye on.

The Chicago Blackhawks season has taken a turn. Although the team’s decline might have been expected, as fans, I think we all still were holding out some hope for a miracle through the last month of the season. That hope seems to be gone.

While the Blackhawks are not going to make the playoffs this season, there are still a handful of reasons to watch the last set of games. Some of those reasons have to do with a few players, all of which were not playing with the team over a month ago.

Today, I wanted to highlight three individual players to keep an eye on as the Hawks season draws to a close. While no individual effort will be able to change the direction of this team, having these three guys step up to the plate will make Stan Bowman’s job a little easier this off-season.

The Hawks have ten more games to go this season, and they currently find themselves in sixth place within the central division. Because Dallas and Nashville both won last night, the hole to climb out to make the playoffs keeps getting deeper. Next year should be better for the team, and if these three players can show just a slight improvement, then Chicago will be in a good position to take a big step forward.

The Hawks are missing depth at a few positions. They have struggled in the faceoff dot and on defense most of all. The team is filled with different centers, but none are winning draws right now, and you can bet if this first player on the list can play at a high level all game, the team will be better off.

New Blackhawk Adam Gaudette has a lot going on right now.

Before last night, his last NHL game was March 24th. He hasn’t played a lot because of a COVID pause in Vancouver and after being traded to the Hawks it was going to take some time to get him up to speed.

Gaudette made his Blackhawks debut last night and played pretty well. The former 2015 fifth-round pick registered an assist through 7:39 minutes of ice time. Even though it was a bad game for the Hawks in general. Gaudette still managed to finish with some good stats.

Gaudette registered two shots on goal and was above fifty percent in both Corsi and Fenwick. I think through the final ten games we will see a lot more of Gaudette. He is a lot better than Matthew Highmore and can provide the team with a bigger offensive burst from the bottom six.

Gaudette can be a major piece to the Blackhawks next season and beyond. The 24-year old still has a lot of hockey ahead of him and will be looking for a new contract this off-season. These next ten games will be like a tryout to see how much the Hawks want to pay him and where he will fit in the lineup next year.

While no one is going to go into next year’s training camp with a spot guaranteed, Gaudette will have a better chance of making the roster if he can continue to show what he is worth on the ice right now.

The Blackhawks need one of their young defensemen to be a star.

Adam Boqvist, Ian Mitchell, and Nicolas Beaudin can all be great offensive defensemen, but this team needs better team defense. Look at the way the Hawks played last night. They gave up some pretty bad goals and left their goaltender out to dry.

Yesterday was the first time Jeremy Colliton changed goalies this season. While I am not going to complain about why he did it, I do think Lankinen was not to blame for last night’s loss. The Hawks need to be better in front of their goalies and it starts with the defensemen.

Riley Stillman is only 23-years-old. The 2016 draft pick has just 47 games of NHL experience. While it is still up for grabs on whether or not he can be an NHL defenseman, it would really help the Hawks if he could be.

Bowman did a great job adding defensemen to the organization through the past couple of years, however, most of them fit a similar mold. Boqvist Mitchell and Beaudin are all smaller guys that are good with the puck. At least one of them really should become a star defenseman in the NHL, but winning is not done through offensive defensemen.

The Hawks need more defensemen like Niklas Hjalmarsson and Johnny Oduya, they need a great shut down pair that can defend a lead. They also need some bigger guys. Seabrook was a physical guy on the blue line and Chicago needs more players like that.

The New Untouchables List for the Chicago Blackhawks

We still do not know a lot about Stillman as the big piece in the trade that brought him to Chicago was Henrik Borgström so I think the next ten games will be critical in seeing where Stillman fits with the team.