Last night the Blackhawks took a team with few likely NHL players to Detroit and lost 2-0. The offense didn’t make the trip to Michigan last night but I thought Arvid Söderblom did well in net. More nights than not, stopping 29 of 31 could be good enough for a win. Last night it wasn’t.
The good news: the Blackhawks have another preseason game tonight. This game is in St. Louis and we’ll be watching/listening to the Blues’ feed of the game. Hopefully their audio works better than last night. The broadcast audio from Detroit was a complete gong show — and that includes when we had voices.
- I thought this was noteworthy yesterday because all three players the Blackhawks ultimately received in the Alex DeBrincat trade with the Senators played last night in Detroit — against DeBrincat’s current employer… he only spent one year in Ottawa. A win is a win, folks.
- Happy 23rd birthday to Isaak Phillips. I thought he had a solid preseason debut last night and has a really good camp.
- Artyom Levshunov skated again on Friday, his fourth straight day ont he ice. Charlie Roumeliotis did the lovely job of sharing video of him with us. This is a terrific sign.
- Some new rankings have Levshunov ranked among the top under-23 players/prospects in the entire NHL. He isn’t the only Blackhawks prospect or NHL player to be on the list, however. I broke it down already on Saturday morning.
- Yesterday I wrote about the Blackhawks’ pipeline being filled with leaders. Two more prospects — Aidan Thompson at DU and Alex Pharand at Sudbury — were named alternate/assistant captains on Friday.
- I wanted to shout out the Murphy family this morning. They drove up from South Bend to watch practice yesterday as a birthday present for a young man who caught my eye way before any skaters took the ice because he was wearing a legit Landon Slaggert blue USA World Juniors jersey. It was nice meeting them and hearing about their really special relationship with Landon. He came up and met all the kids that came with them (the kids got to blow off school for the birthday party) on his way to the bus to the airport after practice. Everybody got something signed and a photo. Landon’s a good dude and this relationship was pretty cool to hear about.
- Ben Pope wrote about the awkward situation Söderblom finds himself in during training camp. Laurent Brossoit signed a two-year deal because Söderblom wasn’t good enough last year. Now, Brossoit is hurt… and Söderblom is still developing and working to show the Blackhawks — and everyone else — that he’s an NHL goaltender. Good stuff here.
- Folks, this one cuts deep. When I saw this from Charlie yesterday it was a gut punch because, even though we’ve known NBC Sports Chicago was going to wrap up in a few days, the “final” things are always tough. I’ve listened to their Blackhawks Talk Podcast pretty much since it began. I really hope there’s some version of something like this somewhere in the interwebs moving forward with Charlie going to WGN and Pat making the move to Chicago Sports Network because they did a terrific job talking about the team, the players, and things going on behind the scenes for years. Full sticktaps to the guys on a job well done.
- The Los Angeles Kings are in a tough spot. They want to get back into a place where they can make a deep playoff run this year, but they revealed on Friday that Drew Doughty is having surgery to repair his ankle. On NHL Network Radio on Sirius/XM on Friday, my friend and Kings insider Dennis Bernstein shared that there was no Achillies’ damage or major tendon concerns. The timetable hasn’t been defined by the team but Bernstein projected somewhere between Thanksgiving and the end of December, which means the Kings are without their most important defender for at least the first two months of the regular season.
- Bernstein said they might test the free agent waters and see if they can sign a guy like Kevin Shattenkirk for cheap to fill a spot until Doughty comes back. Obviously signing a veteran who’s still a free agent on the 28th of September isn’t going to be adequate value to replace Doughty in the lineup.
- Finally, in the “I’m sorry WTF did you say?” category of late Friday night news drops weeks before training camps open for the NBA…