The Chicago Blackhawks have a number of defensemen that they have to figure out what to do with ahead of next season. While the team hasn’t pulled out of the rebuild yet, more than enough young talent is flooding the NHL and deserving of playing time.
This makes it so the Blackhawks have some tough decisions to make. There is room for seven defensemen on the roster and Chicago has 10 who have played NHL games and can play more as soon as next season.
This list includes Alex Vlasic, Sam Rinzel, Artyom Levshunov, Kevin Korchinski, Wyatt Kaiser, Connor Murphy, TJ Brodie, Ethan Del Mastro, Nolan Allan, and Louis Crevier.
Three don’t have to go, but 1-2 may be on their way out.
The first and most likely on his way out is Brodie. He wasn’t utilized in the latter half of the season and his game has fallen off from his time with the Toronto Maple Leafs. He ended the season with 54 games played, had two goals and 10 points, was a -18, and logged 15:38 per game. The only d-man on the Blackhawks who averaged fewer minutes per game in the NHL this season was Allan, and he’s 21 years old and still played 43 games of better hockey than the veteran.
Brodie will have to go via a buyout. As the Blackhawks are a team other teams would look at to take on bad contracts, it doesn’t make sense for them to waste an asset moving the final year of the veteran’s contract when cap space isn’t a concern. Buying Brodie out wouldn’t be a difficult thing to do at all. The only other way I can see this going is if the Blackhawks just bury him in the minors, but he’ll take up playing time over a young defenseman if they do that.
The Blackhawks can’t have zero veterans left on the team with Alec Martinez already announcing his retirement. That should mean there is a good chance Murphy is kept around through at least the first half of the season. He has one year left on his deal and if the Blackhawks were to trade anyone at the deadline next season, it would be him. That would make 23-year-old Vlasic the veteran on defense, but we’ve seen that kind of look on the back-end with the Buffalo Sabres this season. It’s better to play the young players than to have to move them or lose them.
3 Standouts in the Blackhawks’ Pipeline Have Already Debuted This SeasonNear the end of January of this year, general manager Kyle Davidson mentioned six prospects playing outside of the NHL/AHL that caught his eye and stood out. This list of talented young players in the Chicago Blackhawks’ organization included Nick Lardis, Sacha Boisvert, Oliver Moore, Sam Rinzel, Roman Kantserov, and Ryan Greene.
Vlasic, Levshunov, and Rinzel are seemingly untouchable at this time, but I wouldn’t say the same for Kaiser, Del Mastro, Allan, and Korchinski. I think Korchinski, being drafted as high as he did and still so young, deserves a much longer look and leash. All four should be safe for now and rotated into the lineup. That leaves Crevier.
He is a RFA, the only one on defense, is 23 years old, and is a former seventh rounder. I don’t just write off players drafted that late, but if there is an easiest player to go out of the young bunch, it would be him. The other way to look at it is that the Blackhawks don’t have anyone else coming on defense, so Crevier could be brought back and played here and there or used as a depth body.
Tough decisions do have to be made and sometimes the wrong ones are made with so much young talent coming in all at once. You can never be certain who is going to pop off and who is going to fizzle out so early in their pro careers. Fortunately, major decisions don’t have to be made for the Blackhawks yet.
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