The Chicago Blackhawks made their third trade in two days on Friday night, acquiring Dale Weise and Tomas Fleischmann from the Montreal Canadiens in exchange for Phillip Danault and a 2018 second-round pick. Matt Drake from Eyes on the Prize, SB Nation’s Canadiens blog, joins us to give us a better idea of what the newest Hawks players bring to the table.
Here’s what Matt had to say about Weise:
Weise is a great bottom six guy that [Habs coach Michel Therrien] was super high on, so he would often use him in the top six. He spent a lot of time playing with Max Pacioretty and the like, but he was most effective when he was on the third line with David Desharnais and, you guessed it, Tomas Fleischmann. He’s pretty quick, and he has a knack for scoring really timely goals. He could be a solid addition for the playoffs because of that intangible clutch factor.
This description sounds a lot like a player that will thrive in the Blackhawks’ system. A fast player who scores in the big moments is essentially the ideal player for what Joel Quenneville likes to do. Weise is also unafraid to use his body. It was reported earlier today the Hawks were looking for a gritty forward who could score to play with Teuvo Teravainen, and it looks like they’ve found that guy in Weise.
Here are Matt’s insights on Fleischmann:
Fleischmann as provided insane value coming off a successful PTO, but he rode a pretty sizeable PDO wave playing with Weise and Desharnais to get as many points as he has. He’s another super valuable bottom-six guy, but he needs to be sheltered in order to be productive. The issue is that his scoring chance differentials are not great. Scoring chances he’s at 47.4 and high-danger chances he’s even worse at 46.4%. He capitalizes on his own chances really well, but if you want to mitigate the amount of chances you’ll give up with him on the ice he does need to be sheltered.
Fleischmann is a very good depth acquisition for the Blackhawks to strengthen their bottom six. Given that he was successful with Weise in Montreal, it would be unsurprising if we saw these two on either side of Teravainen on the third line going forward.
This move, compounded with Thursday’s acquisition of Andrew Ladd, has set the Blackhawks up with an incredibly deep forward group down the stretch and into the playoffs. They’re going to be as deep if not deeper than any other team in the NHL up front come April and that puts them in a great position to repeat as Stanley Cup champions. Here’s what the Blackhawks lineup could look like down the stretch:
Ladd – Toews – Hossa
Panarin – Anisimov – Kane
Fleischmann – Teravainen – Weise
Shaw – Rasmussen – Panik
Slot Marcus Kruger in for Dennis Rasmussen when he returns from injury in the playoffs and the Blackhawks will have one of the best lineups of centers and one of the deepest forward groups in the NHL. They are clearly all in on winning the Stanley Cup this season, and they’ve set themselves up well to do so.
Adam Hess is a staff writer at Second City Hockey. You can follow him on Twitter at @_adamhess.