On Monday, the Chicago Blackhawks had a scheduled day off from practice. This is very typical following a long road trip. Chicago went 1-3-0 out east and didn’t play particularly well in any of those games, even the one in which they earned a victory.
One of their issues as a team, since the trade deadline, has been team toughness. They sent a lot of that mentality out when they traded Colton Dach, Nick Foligno, Connor Murphy, and Jason Dickinson.
On Monday, they took a step toward addressing that problem. Alex Vlasic, Louis Crevier, Sam Rinzel, Ethan Del Mastro, Sacha Boisvert, and Landon Slaggert showed up at Blackhawks Ice Center to practice their fighting.
These are Chicago’s biggest players in stature, but only Boisvert has ever publicly expressed his desire to fight, and he’s three games into his NHL career. Jeff Blashill and the organization clearly see it as a skill worth developing as they work towards becoming a winner.
This could be a bit of a Tampa Bay Lightning/Florida Panthers effect on the league, as they have won four of the last six Stanley Cups through being a tough, skilled team. There is a lot of skill on those rosters, but there is plenty of “sandpaper” to go with it.
According to Scott Powers of The Athletic, it was Blackhawks pro scout Wade Brookbank who taught these players a thing or two about NHL fighting during this practice. This is not a skill that every one of these players is going to master through one session, but it’s a mentality step that the Blackhawks are clearly taking.
Earlier in the season, Radko Gudas of the Anaheim Ducks kneed Auston Matthews of the Toronto Maple Leafs. Matthews is out for the season as a result of this hit, and Gudas is already back from suspension. At the time of the hit, none of Matthews’ teammates did a single thing about it for the sake of their captain, and it was a horrific look for the team.
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The Blackhawks have been better than the Leafs when it comes to standing up for teammates, but it isn’t good enough, according to management. This practice wouldn’t have happened otherwise. When JT Miller hit Artyom Levshunov into the boards on Friday night at MSG, it took the Blackhawks a couple of shifts to do anything about it.
There are enough stars on the team now for this to be a necessary thing, and the young players who attended this fight practice have to take over for the veterans who were shipped out. They don’t have to become one of the league’s heavyweights, but having enough courage to stand up for teammates through fighting or playing a physical game is always important for a certain portion of the lineup.
