The Blackhawks left Chicago on Monday for their final multi-game road trip of the season with nine healthy defensemen, giving coach Luke Richardson an unenviable task.
Jarred Tinordi has recovered from his hip injury and is cleared to resume playing, while prospect Alex Vlasic will remain with the Hawks for these three contests — against the Flames, Canucks and Kraken — before returning to Rockford next week.
With those two defensemen plus Seth Jones, Caleb Jones, Connor Murphy, Nikita Zaitsev, Andreas Englund, Wyatt Kaiser and Ian Mitchell all hanging around, three guys will need to be healthy-scratched Tuesday in Calgary.
Even over the past couple weeks, playing time has been difficult to find for Mitchell — who has dressed only once since his disastrous outing in Colorado on March 20 — and Englund, who has dressed only twice since returning from a hamstring injury on March 22.
“It’s a tough rotation to keep everybody happy,” Richardson said. “I talked to Englund and...asked him to be patient. If we can get him in as much as we can, [not only] for us to look at [him] but also for him to get looked at by the world, we’re trying to be fair.”
It seems unlikely at this point that Englund, as a pending unrestricted free agent, and Mitchell, as a pending restricted FA, will be brought back.
If that proves correct, it’ll represent a huge fall for Mitchell, who arrived in 2021 with such high expectations. His offensive abilities don’t appear dynamic enough to make up for the defensive shortcomings caused by his lack of size and physical strength.
The other pending FA defensemen are Tinordi (unrestricted) and Caleb Jones (restricted), and they seem much more likely to be brought back. Richardson has raved about Tinordi’s leadership, grittiness and work ethic in particular.
The other question mark is Zaitsev. He technically has another year under contract for $4.5 million, but he could be bought out rather easily. A buyout would create a $2.8 million salary-cap hit next season and $833,000 hit in 2024-25.
Zaitsev’s analytics have been as terrible as the Hawks’ payment for taking him off the Senators’ hands (a second-round pick) suggested they would be. His five-on-five scoring-chance ratio is 29.2% since his March 4 Hawks debut. Over the same time period, Englund ranks second-best among team defensemen at 46.8%, trailing only Caleb Jones at 49.2%.
But Richardson has, for some reason, made Zaitsev a third-pairing staple. He hasn’t scratched him once. Zaitsev’s right-handedness is one factor in his favor; Richardson also likes his mentorship of Kaiser.
Nonetheless, on Saturday against the Devils, Richardson did begin rotating both Kaiser and Vlasic up to the first pairing next to Seth Jones, which should provide the youngsters significantly more fruitful experience. Caleb Jones was therefore bumped next to Murphy on the second pairing.
The Hawks reviewed a clip Monday in which Vlasic and Seth Jones struggled to defend a Devils rush. Richardson wanted Vlasic to see that if he had shifted over towards Seth quicker and yelled out that he was doing so, the Hawks’ backchecking forward could’ve rotated over to cover the open Devil, allowing the Hawks to snuff out the chance.
“We’d like [Vlasic] to get more assertive verbally, and that’ll get him more engaged physically,” Richardson said. “He’s going to be a big part of the future. We need him to get comfortable doing that.”
Of course, the most notable man of all heading on this road trip is forward Jonathan Toews, who evidently recovered well enough from his much-anticipated Saturday return. He told Richardson on Monday he was “feeling good.”
The Hawks enter the trip in sole possession of last place in the NHL with 54 points. The Blue Jackets’ overtime win Sunday moved them into a 30th-place tie with the Ducks at 56 points each.
