Two Schools Of Thought For The Blackhawks On How To Approach The 8th Pick In The Draft
There are 43 days between today and the NHL Draft in Dallas on June 22. Many things will change. There will be trades, RFA signings, movin’, shakin’, and endless mock drafts and tweets about why a certain player is trash and others are good and why Stan Bowman is an idiot. As we get closer to the draft I will narrow the focus of these draft blogs, but for now I want to focus on the two schools of thought for strategy regarding this draft and perhaps the overall direction of the franchise.
Now, I should clarify…this isn’t something that is out there broadly among Blackhawks fans, but really it’s just something I think about on long drives or flights when I didn’t bring my head phones.
The Blackhawks slogan for the better part of the last decade has been “One Goal”. One Goal meaning obviously to win the Stanley Cup. The last two years haven’t really felt like that though. In 2016 the Blackhawks swung for the fences with deadline deals while searching for that 4th Cup. Since then it’s felt a little bit more like “Three is a enough, let’s just try to get in the dance”. Stan Bowman traded key pieces Panarin and Hjalmarsson for guys who had “cap certainty” in the future. And all of a sudden the message was clear…the Blackhawks were trying to extend this run beyond the prime of Toews, Kane, Keith, Crawford and Seabrook.
While that is perfectly sound logic in some regards, I am on the other side of the argument. Special players like Toews, Kane, and Keith don’t come around very often and the window to be a truly elite team closes in an instant. I would’ve preferred that the Blackhawks just really truly go for it with Panarin and then lose him in 2 years if it came to that, rather than completely bottom out like they have. For the simple reason that when Panarin would walk Toews and Kane would both be 31, Keith would be turning 36, Crawford…34, and Seabrook(who is already rapidly declining) 34. So what’s the point of planning for the future when your core has aged and are likely not going to be good enough to be the best players on the best team?
Which brings us back to this draft. There are two ways to look at it, in my humble stupid blogger brain opinion. You can either draft a guy who is theoretically a great fit for your current core of players or…you take the guy who you feel will be the cornerstone piece of the next 10 years.
It seems as though the top 3 guys are pretty well etched in stone at the top of the draft. Dahlin, Svechnikov, and Zadina will be gone quickly and in that order. Then I just have this feeling that there will be a run on defensemen because that’s the way the NHL is going. Hughes, Bouchard, Boqvist, and maybe even Dobson will be taken with picks 4,5,6, and 7. Which would leave the Blackhawks with an interesting theoretical choice between Brady Tkachuk, Oliver Wahlstrom, and Jesperi Kotkaniemi.
If you follow me on twitter then you know how I feel about Brady Tkachuk. I think he is EXACTLY what the Blackhawks need at LW with Schmaltz and Kane. A big, mean, bad mamma jamma, who goes to the net with and without the puck, pisses people off and can REALLY thinks the game at an elite level. At the WJC against his peers you could really see him making plays to set up teammates and be dangerous in scoring areas. He would amazing as a guy who could occupy D in front and create space for Kane and Schmaltz. I am in love with the idea of him at that spot. Wahlstrom, like Tkachuk, is a winger who would be a great fit in the Blackhawks top 6 and likely in short order. He has a GREAT shot and good speed. Sounds like a guy who would be perfect next to Toews and Saad. Wahlstrom is going to Harvard next year and it’s been reported that Tkachuk will return to BU for his sophomore year, BUT because of their positions and their strengths I think both of them will be in the NHL no later than March of 2019. If you’re looking to get the absolute most out of Toews and Kane then you’re probably going to want one of these two wings.
The other path is to try to draft a replacement for Toews rather than a compliment for him. Enter…Jesperi Kotkaniemi of the Finnish Elite League.
A natural center who put up insane points against men in Liiga as a 17 year-old. 29 points in 57 games. That’s good enough for 7th best in Liiga history and better production as an under-age player than guys like…Teuvo Teravainen and Mikko Rantanen, pretty pretttayyy good. Scouts compare him to a young Anze Kopitar. You compare a guy to Kopitar and I instantly start to get a little tingly. Kotkaniemi is one of the younger players in this draft though. He’ll definitely be in Finland next year and probably at least the year after that. Meaning his NHL eta could be as a 20 year-old in 2020-21. Which is fine. It’s just that your window is definitely going to be slammed shut at that point and the Blackhawks will hope that a combination of Kotkaniemi with Sikura, DeBrincat, Schmaltz, Hinostroza, etc will be able to keep the Hawks in the playoffs as the Stanley Cup core ages. And then maybe in 2022, if Kotkaniemi is a STUD he can be your front line 1C as Toews moves into a traditional 3C lock-down center role with Schmaltz being your 2C. Maybe.
So it get’s back to the slogan…one goal. What does that mean? Is the goal to win big with this group and use this draft to help them as soon as possible. Or is the goal to kind of turn into the Red Wings and just be pretty good for the next 10 years or so? The draft is a crap shoot and obviously this entire blog is HIGHLY speculative, but if the Blackhawks go with a pure center instead of a wing like Tkachuk or Wahlstrom then it’ll be pretty obvious where their heads are.
PS: “Chief, you dummy, the Blackhawks need a defensemen in the top 10″. No, YOU’RE the dummy. I don’t think one of the elite elite D will be there. If Hughes or Bouchard is still there at 8 then fine. If not, I want to just take K’Andre Miller with the Preds pick. Then the D of the future looks like…
Miller-Jokiharju
Keith-Mitchell
Hillman/Murphy/Gilbert-Seabrook