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

Pius Suter #24, Chicago Blackhawks Mandatory Credit: Christopher Hanewinckel-USA TODAY Sports
Pius Suter #24, Chicago Blackhawks Mandatory Credit: Christopher Hanewinckel-USA TODAY Sports
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Pius Suter #24, Chicago Blackhawks Mandatory Credit: Christopher Hanewinckel-USA TODAY Sports
Pius Suter #24, Chicago Blackhawks Mandatory Credit: Christopher Hanewinckel-USA TODAY Sports /

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.

Kirby Dach #77, Chicago Blackhawks (Photo by Gregory Shamus/Getty Images)
Kirby Dach #77, Chicago Blackhawks (Photo by Gregory Shamus/Getty Images) /

Kirby Dach seems to be still struggling with his wrist injury on the ice.

While no one is expected to come back so quickly on top of his game, the Hawks need Dach now more than ever. Dach’s production is not what it was last post-season or just during the regular season.

The former third overall draft pick has just one goal and four assists through 12 games on the year. He has had countless scoring chances, including some pretty nice dekes to get around defenders and drive towards the net, but he has failed to capitalize on a lot of those chances.

Someone always seems to have bad puck luck with this team; last year, it was DeBrincat, and this year to a lesser extent, it is Dach.

Kirby Dach is winning just 39.7 percent of his faceoffs this season. His numbers in the dot are worse than Kurashev, Strome, Kampf, and Suter. Maybe the team should consider playing Dach less at center as the season comes to a close.

The same way the team experimented with moving Strome to the wing, they should do the same with Dach and switch the two. Through the final ten games, the Hawks need to see Dach produce a little more. While I do not think they will overact this off-season and move him, they might take his poor faceoff tendencies and inability to finish into account when looking at the center depth.

Adam Gaudette #88, Vancouver Canucks Mandatory Credit: Anne-Marie Sorvin-USA TODAY Sports
Adam Gaudette #88, Vancouver Canucks Mandatory Credit: Anne-Marie Sorvin-USA TODAY Sports /

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.

Riley Stillman #61, Chicago Blackhawks Mandatory Credit: Tim Fuller-USA TODAY Sports
Riley Stillman #61, Chicago Blackhawks Mandatory Credit: Tim Fuller-USA TODAY Sports /

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.

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