Blackhawks defenseman Wyatt Kaiser’s first five games ever in the AHL were far from the finest five games in Rockford IceHogs history.
Rockford went 0-5-0 while getting outscored 23-4 during a disastrous two-week span. It was not the best environment for Kaiser to rebuild his confidence, which had dipped during a rough finish to November with the Hawks.
The 21-year-old rookie understandably wasn’t thrilled to hear on Dec. 1 that he was being sent down, either. He had jumped directly from the NCAA to NHL upon signing out of Minnesota-Duluth last spring, skipping the AHL step, and then convincingly earned an NHL roster spot in training camp again this fall.
“You’re obviously not happy about it,” Kaiser said Tuesday. “You would be lying if you said everything is sunshine and rainbows. But I went down there just trying to get better, work on things, keep a positive mindset and learn as much as [possible].”
And after sending him down, the Hawks didn’t expect to need to call him back up just a couple weeks later — especially given how little team success Kaiser witnessed in the meantime. But their defensive injury plague necessitated it this past Saturday.
In spite of all that, Kaiser still felt like he gained some things from his brief stint. His primary focus was on doing something that initially sounds counterintuitive but makes sense when he explains it: trying less hard.
He felt like he had begun rushing things in the NHL and working harder than necessary on certain occasions. For example, he found himself making quick skate movements to defend plays that he could’ve just used his stick and reach to break up in simpler fashion, or trying to immediately break up plays that he could more easily break up a second later.
In Rockford, he tried to remain calmer during the course of every play by taking breaths, being more efficient with his movements and maintaining more confidence in his decisions. He hopes that calmness translates back into his NHL performance.
“I know I’m a good hockey player,” he said. “I know I can play at this level. There [have] been games where I’ve shown it. But [there are] a lot of differences from what I’ve ever played. It’s a longer season [with] a lot less practices.”
Accepting the inevitability of small mistakes is another adjustment he has tried to make.
On Tuesday against the Avalanche, for example, that meant not beating himself up about failing to block a goal line-to-slot pass that led to Valeri Nichushkin’s first-period power-play goal. He moved on from that and cut off Nathan MacKinnon twice along the boards in the final 20 seconds of the third period to help seal the Hawks’ win.
“You make three or four mistakes and you’re kind of thinking you played horrible,” he said. “How can you focus on the good things you did, so you don’t start slipping and going downhill mentally? I’m still trying to figure it out.
“I don’t know all the answers, to be honest, so [I’m] just asking guys questions. And with a lot of mental stuff, everybody’s different, so you just have to go experience it yourself and really work through it.”
Hawks coach Luke Richardson reviewed a few video clips with Kaiser on Thursday, instructing him to be further out of the crease and tight on Nichushkin on that penalty-kill sequence — letting Petr Mrazek and Taylor Raddysh deal with covering the back-door seam-pass possibility.
They also discussed a third-period counterattack where Kaiser drifted too far up the ice too quickly, joining the first wave of the rush instead of providing a second wave.
“He made some good, quick plays defensively using his feet [with] good body position, but then sometimes [he’s] getting into trouble,” Richardson said. “[These are] good reps for him.”
