The Chicago Blackhawks iced an interesting lineup for their first game of the season against Utah HC. It was relatively different from what was tried for the majority of pre-season and it didn’t pay off.
Ilya Mikheyev, expected to play on the third line, was on the top line with Connor Bedard. While this gives the line more speed and the trio that also included Teuvo Teravainen didn’t play poorly, it mixed up the other lines.
Lukas Reichel was getting looks on the second line in training camp, but was a healthy scratch to open the season for the Blackhawks. Andreas Athanasiou joined him after Luke Richardson had specifically said he likes the fourth line of Athanasiou, Pat Maroon, and Craig Smith in pre-season.
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As the pre-season moved along, the expectation was that any one of Tyler Bertuzzi, Taylor Hall, or Philipp Kurashev would be on the top line. Instead, those three formed the second line. While a couple of posts were hit and the line did fairly well together, it produced no goals and all three were -2 on the night.
Richardson spoke after the game and said that, “We adjust a few things this week and we haven’t had a lot of practice…” The Blackhawks that made the opening night roster haven’t got as much time together because there had been a number of the prospects still fighting for a spot in the NHL.
Fortunately for Chicago, the team has a couple of practice days before their next game on Friday in Winnipeg against the Jets. As far as games the team needs to win goes, the ones against divisional opponents rank at the top.
When Richardson was asked about switching up the pairings in the third period of the game against Utah, he said, “Just managing where the starts were. Offensive zone when we’re behind…same thing I was doing with the forwards a little bit. Change it up a little bit in the third and try to get a little bit of a spark, which we got a spark.”
The Blackhawks went down 3-0 by the halfway point in the game and something had to give. As far as what was expected of the defensive pairings from training camp, not having Kevin Korchinski on the team really altered the duos. Alex Vlasic was split from Seth Jones while Alec Martinez took his place on the top pairing. Connor Murphy played the second fewest minutes among defense on Chicago.
There is going to be a lot of altering of lines at forward and defense until a line or pairing really shows they should be kept together for an extended period of time. Trailing late in a game forces changes, but the Blackhawks also can’t dig themselves into too big of a hole to kick off the 2024-25 season if they want a shot at playoffs or an improvement from last season.
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