AJ Spellacy has been the talk of camp, and for good reason. As a third-round pick who is still relatively young in his hockey career, there weren’t many expectations before he arrived for the prospect showcase practices and games. But he got our attention then and he’s kept it in NHL camp. We’ll see what he has for us tonight in Detroit on a slightly different line. He’ll have Landon Slaggert on his line instead of Ryan Donato. He’s so popular the still unsigned prospect got the graphic treatment for tonight’s game in Detroit from the team!
Spellacy made a physical impact on the game on Wednesday night, and he’ll get a chance to run it back again tonight in Detroit with the Blackhawks in the second preseason game. He mixed it up, played with speed and did a nice job of continuing to show what he can do. When asked about his physical play on Thursday, he had a pretty simple answer:
โItโs something that I like to do. It gets players to back off my teammates. If Iโm able to sustain playing that way then I think itโs big for myself and for the team.โ
Here’s a clip of him attacking the net on Wednesday night:
AJ Spellacy had a few noticeable plays in the first period. This was a drive to the net earlier in the period. pic.twitter.com/WfYMQCMpil— Scott Powers (@ByScottPowers) September 26, 2024
- Here are the lines we saw at Blackhawks practice on Thursday that project for tonight in Detroit:
- So how did Spellacy’s impressive three weeks in Chicago impact his stock in my ranking of the Blackhawks’ prospect pipeline? I’m so glad you asked! Because on Friday morning I released our updated training camp edition of BN’s Top 25 Blackhawks Prospects.
- It looks like he won’t play in either of the first two preseason games, but I thought I’d share this piece from Ben Pope a couple days ago about Philipp Kurashev. He’ll get into the lineup at some point, possibly Saturday in St. Louis.
- While we’re on the subject of the Blackhawks’ forwards and Ben Pope writing stuff… on Thursday I wrote about the forward competition for the Blackhawks. So did Ben. Here’s his in case you hadn’t read it yet.
- Can I interest you in new individual photos of University of Minnesota sophomore forward Oliver Moore?
- Thoughts and prayers go out to Scott Powers at The Athletic, who will no longer be able to update us on the progress of Max Shalunov. Powers broke the news on Friday morning that he is indeed no longer affiliated with the Blackhawks (he isn’t on their reserve list).
- The Sabres have a new captain. It’s Rasmus Dahlin, the No. 1 overall pick in the 2018 NHL Draft.
- This might get messy, but we expected it to happen. The NHLPA officially filed a grievance on behalf of Ryan Johansen. The Flyers became the latest organization to punt him this year, terminating his contract. We’ll see where this goes from here.
- Finally, some surprising news overnight as the Chicago Sky fired the coach their rookie of the year candidate loves. We’ll see how that all works out…