After Friday night’s post-Christmas disaster against the Sabres, the Blackhawks kept their forward lines in place for Sunday’s matchup with Dallas. The move, or lack thereof, is a clear change by interim head coach Anders Sorensen, as former bench boss Luke Richardson would have thrown his lines in a blender – a nice adjustment considering that the Blackhawks aren’t a playoff team and need their lines to gel with one another.
While the Blackhawks are keeping their forward lines in place, they’re certainly making things interesting on the defensive side. On Sunday morning, Chicago recalled Wyatt Kaiser and sent Kevin Korchinski to Rockford.
Korchinski hasn’t played his best hockey over the past few weeks, including a -2 night on Friday. While he’s been held without a point since he was brought up on Dec. 9, he’s shown that he belongs in the NHL soon and will be a vital part of the Blackhawks for years to come. It’s a bummer that he won’t be able to participate in Tuesday’s Winter Classic at Wrigley Field, but he’ll hopefully have a few more opportunities to play outdoor hockey down the road.
Kaiser wasn’t great before being sent down on Dec. 14, but he was one of Chicago’s best skaters back in November – the Blackhawks hope he can turn into another Alex Vlasic. He accomplished the goal of regaining confidence in Rockford, going +5 in four games with the IceHogs. After playing in back-to-back games and catching a late flight, Kaiser isn’t in Sunday’s lineup.
Instead, Sunday’s defensive pairings were put in a blender, and while anything can happen, it isn’t bold to say that things could get ugly. TJ Brodie was surprisingly bumped up to the top line next to Seth Jones, which feels like a disaster waiting to happen (again, after writing that, they’ll probably each score and shut down the Stars). The second pairing of Vlasic and Louis Crevier is an intriguing one – last season, Crevier was one of the worst players in the entire league. However, he’s been promising this year, and if he keeps it up and meshes well with Vlasic, the two could make up an unexpected long-term pairing. That leaves Nolan Allan and Connor Murphy on the third pairing, which doesn’t exactly jump off the page but could be interesting as well. Allan has been excellent in his first full season, and while he’s been defensively responsible enough, putting a young skater next to a proven shot-blocker like Murphy never hurts.
