which could come on Friday<\/a>, the Blackhawks would like to discuss the possibility of him signing a one-day contract and retiring with the organization. The Blackhawks have maintained a positive relationship with Toews since he left the team.<\/p>\n\u2022 Coach Jeff Blashill anticipated his entire staff returning for next season.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow, you never know what happens, somebody may get a job offer and things like that, but as we sit here today, I anticipate our staff will be back,\u201d Blashill said. \u201cReally, really enjoyed the group \u2026 We were able to have very, very good discussions, certainly didn\u2019t always see eye-to-eye. There\u2019s a big group of us, there\u2019s a group of like nine guys that are involved in our coaching staff, and I think we have great dialog.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think just the feedback we\u2019ve gotten from our players was real positive in terms of what they thought of our group as a coaching staff. I look forward to continue to grow with this group. It\u2019s going to be important that we don\u2019t take our foot off the gas at all.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2022 Artyom Levshunov originally planned to split his time in Florida and Chicago this offseason, but he decided recently he\u2019ll remain mostly in Chicago over the summer.<\/p>\n
\u2022 When I interviewed Roman Kantserov recently, one of the things we talked about was his path to the NHL and whether he wished he would have signed earlier.<\/p>\n
His interpreter said, \u201cOriginally when he didn\u2019t sign with NHL right away, he maybe a little bit was regretting. But then when they won the Gagarin Cup, he knew that it was the right step to do because it\u2019s contributed to his development and to his growth. At this point in his life, he thinks that this page has turned already. So it is what it is and he\u2019s ready for the next step and he is moving forward with it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Who will the Blackhawks draft at No. 4?<\/p>\n
Scott Powers<\/p>\n
Talking tactics with Blashill<\/p>\n
In my recently interview with Blashill, I asked him an outside-the-box tactical question and it created an interesting conversation. My question was about how in soccer coaches often add more defenders to the playing field late in games to protect leads and whether there was a possibility that could work in hockey.<\/p>\n
Blashill: It\u2019s an interesting question. I\u2019m not the biggest (soccer) guy. I\u2019ve watched some. It feels like soccer\u2019s a little harder to score than hockey, and so I think you can probably have a little more success in preventing defense in soccer than you can in hockey. I think hockey, my gut still, the best way to kind of salt away a win is to play really efficient but not defensive, still stay on the attack, make the other team defend, but not add any unneeded risk. I think, for me, hockey is still always about risk-reward, and what\u2019s your risk versus what\u2019s your reward.<\/p>\n
With the five forwards on the power play, it felt like minimal risk. There wasn\u2019t much going the other way.<\/p>\n
Blashill:\u00a0 Somebody\u2019s asked me about three forwards on three-on-three. And by the way, that\u2019s an area that we have to be better at. If you look at our overtime, you know, once the game ended in regulation, if we flip with some teams, we\u2019re either a playoff team or we\u2019re super close and we probably don\u2019t trade people and all those kind of things.<\/p>\n
Do you feel like you can coach three-on-three?<\/p>\n
Blashill: I would say it\u2019s harder to coach. The less guys on the ice, the more it becomes mano a mano \u2014 not man-on-man, but just more about the actual individuals. But you can decide what people to put on the ice. I\u2019ve watched the evolution of three-and-three, and this goes to your question probably. If you put super high-risk, super talented but high-risk players on the ice, something\u2019s going to happen and someone\u2019s probably going to score one way or the other. And if you put three really defensive players on the ice, you\u2019re probably gonna get to a shootout. And so, you can kind of dictate that a little bit.<\/p>\n
But having three forwards on the ice doesn\u2019t necessarily mean more risk. It just depends how responsible those guys are. If you put three high-risk-takers on, whether they\u2019re forwards or D, that dictates it more than anything. So the power play to me, the risk in power plays and the short-handed opportunities in the power play honestly probably have more to do with the two guys on the flank than the guy up top. So whether that\u2019s a forward or a D, that doesn\u2019t really matter to me. It\u2019s more about the responsibility of the two on the flank.<\/p>\n
Are you coming around to three forwards in overtime then?<\/p>\n
Blashill: I think that\u2019s all based on your team. And listen, if you have really talented \u2026 Like, I don\u2019t think Colorado is not going to put Cale Makar out there just to have three forwards on the ice \u2026 So it depends on your team and how good those individual players are, and two, how comfortable they are in those spots. That\u2019s probably the biggest barrier for having a forward at the point on the power plays. Usually they\u2019re just not comfortable there, and it takes too long for them to get comfortable for you to actually stay with it as a coach.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"All remains quiet with the Chicago Blackhawks. With the draft a week away, there will be some action…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":713853,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[4824,385,99],"class_list":["post-713852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-chicago-blackhawks","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/713852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=713852"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/713852\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/713853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=713852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=713852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=713852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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