CHICAGO — It’s been hard to find much fault this season with Jeff Blashill, who almost immediately turned the Blackhawks into a respectable, competitive team with an emphasis on structure and scrappiness. The first-year Chicago coach won’t get any attention in the Jack Adams Trophy race, not with the likes of Dan Muse, Lindy Ruff, Joel Quenneville and Jon Cooper around, but Blashill deserves a lot of credit for pulling the wheel-spinning rebuild out of the mud and getting it moving in an actual direction.
But his commitment to André Burakovsky on the top line has become a sticking point for a frustrated fan base. You can hear it whenever his name is announced at the United Center, and you can see it in the comments section in any story about the Blackhawks in The Athletic.
During the Luke Richardson years, Blackhawks fans clamored for some consistency in the lineup, for Connor Bedard to have an actual chance to develop some chemistry with a linemate over a few games before having him ripped away and replaced. Now, the complaints stem from the stagnancy of the lineup, particularly the top line, where Burakovsky has been stapled to Bedard’s right wing all season, even as he’s been mired in a slump of staggering proportions.
Dating back to Christmas, Burakovsky has just two goals in 33 games, and just one in his last 25 following Friday night’s 4-1 loss to the overpowering Colorado Avalanche. His assist against the Boston Bruins on Jan. 17 is his only helper in 26 games. Blashill has repeatedly pointed to the team’s internal analytics, which say that Burakovsky has been a steady generator of scoring chances and that the Blackhawks have regularly out-chanced opponents with him on the ice. And sure enough, against Colorado, Bedard sprung Burakovsky for a first-period breakaway, though he was denied by Mackenzie Blackwood. Burakovsky also set up Bedard for a good chance with a nifty little leave in the offensive zone early in the second, but Bedard was denied, too.
Now, it’s undoubtedly true that the Blackhawks’ internal numbers are more accurate than the publicly available ones. The Blackhawks are meticulously rewatching and tracking each game, while Natural Stat Trick and the like are scraping publicly available data that largely doesn’t account for things such as pre-shot passes and other important situational factors.
But can they be this far off? Per Natural Stat Trick, since the Olympic break, the Blackhawks entered Friday’s game having been out-chanced 73-56 with Burakovsky on the ice at five-on-five, and having been thumped in high-danger chances 31-19. Only fourth-liner Landon Slaggert has worse numbers. The Blackhawks have played opponents to a 5-4 edge in those minutes (including Wyatt Kaiser’s goal Friday off a feathery feed from Ryan Greene), so the damage has been limited. But so has the offense. For comparison’s sake, Tyler Bertuzzi, playing on the second line mostly with Frank Nazar and Teuvo Teräväinen, is a positive player in terms of goals (7-5), scoring chances (63-58) and high-danger chances (25-22) during that same time frame. The goal differential suggests Burakovsky hasn’t been an anchor for Bedard. But he hasn’t exactly been a buoy, either.
In the few instances when Burakovsky hasn’t been on Bedard’s wing, Bedard has seen time with Teräväinen, Ilya Mikheyev or Nazar, for the most part. One player who hasn’t seen much time with Bedard is Ryan Donato. Donato was Bedard’s most-frequent linemate last season en route to a career-high 31 goals and a career-high 31 assists, a season that earned him a four-year, $16 million contract. But this season, Donato has been almost exclusively in the bottom six, and has 14 goals and 13 assists in 69 games.
Asked directly about why Donato hasn’t been used in that same role this season, Blashill spoke more generally — but pointedly, all the same.
“First off, I want to find the best pair, not just for what best helps Ryan or what best helps Connor,” he said. “There’s a give-and-take to those things. Ultimately, I’ve felt better about the guys that I’ve had him with. There’s lots that go into it that I really don’t want to talk about here, with all due respect to everybody. But there’s certainly a ton that goes into all our decision-making with who plays with who and which guys have the right game for each other.
“Some guys are real big give-and-go type players, and they feed off the give-and-go games that each other has. Some guys are guys that are self-generated, that generate on their own and don’t necessarily have that same give-and-go game. Some guys are straight-line players and they put pucks in behind them and they’re more forecheckers. So everybody plays different and gets exponentially the best for each guy. Ultimately, I’m trying to maximize each one of our guys, not one player. And we’re doing the best we can to come up with those combinations.”
Donato, for his part, has handled the demotion with his usual grace and good humor. And he’s jumped wholesale into his more defensive and diminished role just as he jumps into any scrum and scrap he can find. Blashill said he’s “done a great job” and “been a great teammate” and that he “can’t speak highly enough about his character.”
But he also wasn’t hiding his true assessment of Donato as a top-six player.
“As I said to him at the beginning of the year, it’s great that he had a lot of goals last year, but they didn’t win that many games,” Blashill said. “Ultimately, what we want is him and everybody else on our team to be guys that can score on really good teams. Now we’re not there yet, I get it, our record isn’t there yet. But I think we’re headed in the right direction. So we want guys that learn how to produce offense on really good teams. That’s a huge challenge for a lot of players. It’s one thing to produce points on teams that aren’t good, and we’re still working at this, to produce points on teams that are in the playoffs and have (a) chance to win. We’re not there yet, but that’s what we’re trying to work toward with everybody.”
That’s the thing. Blashill’s not wrong about Donato. He’s probably not a top-line player, particularly one on a great team. The problem is, the Blackhawks only have one of those at the moment: Bedard. Burakovsky looked the part for the first half of the season, with seven goals and 11 assists in the first 21 games. We’re months past that now, and the scrutiny on Blashill is warranted. But the coach also is not wrong when he suggests he doesn’t have better options at the moment. Donato probably deserves a look, at least, but he’s not the long-term solution. Nick Lardis might get there, but he hasn’t proven worthy just yet. Bertuzzi and Teräväinen are working too well with Nazar to break up that trio. Mikheyev’s defensive role is even more important since the Jason Dickinson trade. Sacha Boisvert, when his work visa clears, could be fun, but let’s keep expectations within reason; he had just three goals in 26 games at Boston University this season and just turned 20 this week.
So when we put together our way-too-early projections for next season’s roster, we still had Burakovsky on Bedard’s wing, and it was almost by default. Maybe Roman Kantserov doesn’t need much of an adjustment period and the top line can be the one Blackhawks fans dream of — Bedard flanked by Anton Frondell, the 2025 third-overall pick, and Kantserov, who led the KHL with 36 goals this season at just 20 years old.
But chances are, Burakovsky’s still going to be there when this season ends, and he’s still going to be there when next season begins. That means, like it or not, it’s simply up to Burakovsky to force himself out of this funk — because it doesn’t look like Blashill will force him out of this spot.
NOTES: Defenseman Louis Crevier and winger Andrew Mangiapane missed Friday’s game with injuries and are likely out Sunday against the Nashville Predators, too. Blashill said Crevier should leave with the team for New York on Monday, but that Mangiapane likely will join the team at some point during the trip. Dominic Toninato replaced Mangiapane in the lineup, and the Blackhawks went back to six defensemen after going 11/7 in Thursday’s win over the Minnesota Wild. The Blackhawks are still waiting for Boisvert’s visa to clear, so he’s likely to make his debut on the upcoming East Coast trip.