Michael Peca praises young Blackhawks defenseman

Chicago Blackhawks assistant coach Michael Peca was on Tuesday’s episode of Morning Cuppa Hockey with Jonny Lazarus and former Blackhawks analyst Colby Cohen. While most of his time was spent talking about Game 7 between the Buffalo Sabres and Montreal Canadiens and the Stanley Cup Playoffs, what he had to say about the Blackhawks was very interesting.

The Youth is Taking Over

As we’ve seen in the Stanley Cup Playoffs, the youth movement across the league is starting to take over. The Canadiens are the youngest team to make a Conference Final in over 30 years. Jackson Blake and Logan Stankoven have been two of the best players on the Carolina Hurricanes. The Anaheim Ducks were two wins shy of the Western Conference Final, and even the Utah Mammoth looked impressive in their first postseason run.

“These young guys are just unfazed,” Peca said. “They come in at a young age, they play right away, and they have success – then it’s just the sky’s the limit. They just come in with a level of confidence now. Back when I was in the league, you knew there was a pecking order. You were afraid to burp in the locker room. You were afraid to do things and offend somebody. You couldn’t shoot high in practice at the backup goalie, for crying out loud. There were just things you couldn’t do.”

The Blackhawks have a ton of skilled young players on the current roster and a whole slew more on the way. This postseason is showing that you don’t have to have a team of guys all over 6’2 to win playoff games. While you still need size and physicality, your best players don’t need to be behemoths.

“The game is slowly starting to become a skill game again,” Peca said. “I know we had the rough-and-tumble Florida Panthers the last few years, and Tampa is trying to play that way a little bit this year. But, at the end of the day, I don’t know how many guys are actually intimidated by that stuff anymore.”

Peca is hopeful that his team will be the next young team to prove that skill is superior when it matters most.

Artyom Levshunov Gets Vote of Confidence

Peca spent the previous two seasons as an assistant for the New York Rangers, a veteran team that was built to win a Stanley Cup. He’s now tasked with getting a team full of young players to the next level so they can win for many years to come. He and the rest of the coaching staff know what is expected of them and are ready to see it through.

“There’s a lot of upside with our young, not just because a lot of them are skilled, but it’s because they want to win,” he said. “When you’re around a lot of the Chicago alumni who come around the rink, who have had a lot of success in the NHL, they’re getting a sense of what it takes to win. As a staff, we’re trying to be patient. We’re trying to help these guys find out who they are – being patient through that process because it's easy to want to win now. But we know as a staff our goal isn’t to win now; it’s to build a team identity and a mindset where the players are eventually going to take ownership of this.”

After giving some praise to some of the young forwards, including Ryan Greene and Oliver Moore, Peca talked about the young defensive corps.  He was quick to give one blueliner, in particular, his flowers.

“On the backend, it’s a different process dealing with some of these young defensemen as it is with forwards,” he said. “Sometimes guys have got to be in the minors, and they’ve got to experience success at the pro level. They need to learn to defend more because, at the end of the day, if you’re a defenseman and you don’t defend and don’t break pucks out, you’re probably not going to be in the league very long.

“I think Artyom Levshunov is going to be an excellent player. He may not be the greatest offensive defenseman the organization’s ever had, but as far as an all-around defenseman that can defend, he’s insanely strong for a kid his age. He is brilliant. He sees the game. He’s just got to build that confidence. He’s literally a child in a big man’s body, and once he gets that, my goodness, he’s going to be really, really, really good.”

Levshunov had his ups and downs in his first full NHL season, which is expected from a 20-year-old defenseman. There were struggles, as well as flashes of why he was taken with the second overall pick in 2024. Some fans are down on him because we didn’t get greatness from day one. While we’ve seen more of that with guys in recent years like Cale Makar, Quinn Hughes, and, most recently, Matthew Schaeffer, it is still very rare to see young defensemen have that much success to start their career. Writing off Levshunov at this point is flat-out silly, and Peca believes he’ll get to the level we all want.

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