There was a lot of hope that the Chicago Blackhawks’ 2023-24 defense group would consist primarily of young, exciting defensemen for much of the season, which ended up being partially true. Alex Vlasic obviously cemented himself as a legit NHL player and Kevin Korchinski showed flashes that brought excitement for the future, but those were the only two regular defenders under the age of 25 this past season. However, three other young defensemen — Wyatt Kaiser, Isaak Phillips, and Louis Crevier — did get an opportunity to play with Chicago, albeit less than 40 games for each of them. Of those three, Kaiser was the most highly touted as a prospect, so let’s look at how he performed this season and what he could build upon in the future.
After the patient and successful developmental approach for fellow NCAA alum Vlasic — the first defenseman the Blackhawks have drafted and developed since Niklas Hjalmarsson — there was a lot of expectation that Kaiser would follow a similar path of time spent in the AHL before making a positive impact with the Blackhawks. However, after being the the stand-out defensive prospect at Blackhawks training camp last fall according to coach Luke Richardson, Kaiser jumped ahead of the timeline and made the NHL roster to start the season.
The results at the beginning of the season didn’t quite measure up to Kaiser’s training camp performance, though — not surprising considering transitioning straight from college to professional hockey is difficult for most players, much less on a team lacking depth and support like the Blackhawks. Kaiser started out pretty solid in October, but as the games progressed through November, he struggled to maintain the calm, poised style of play he was known for while playing top-pair minutes at Minnesota-Duluth for three years.
Kaiser ended up playing in 32 games with the Blackhawks, 21 of which occurred before he was sent to Rockford at the start of December. In that span, he had four assists and averaged 16:34 of ice time per game, including 2:01 per game on the penalty kill. While that production is low, Kaiser’s points per 60 rates were solid comparatively to the rest of the Blackhawks defenders who played at least 10 games during the same span: his 5-on-5 rate (0.81) was second only to Seth Jones and his all-situations rate (0.69) was third after Jones and Korchinski. This shows two things: one is that Kaiser can contribute on offense, and the other is how abysmal Chicago’s blue line was at contributing offensively at the beginning of the season.
Also, in those 21 games, the rookie defender owned 43.82 percent of shot attempts (fourth out of six defenders), 42.20 percent of the shots on goal (fifth), 44.42 percent of expected goals (third), and 48.00 percent of goals (first) at 5-on-5. Considering the shot shares for the Blackhawks as a team at this point were bottom of the league, those numbers aren’t unexpected, but it’s somewhat encouraging that Kaiser was on the positive side of both quality chances and goal results. The caveat here is that he was playing softer minutes at 5-on-5. Conversely, his main defense partners were Nikita Zaitsev (102:52) and Jarred Tinordi (100:13) — the poorest performing on the team — during this time, so those things likely evened out in terms of the difficulty of his assignment.
Now let’s explore the underlying numbers for Kaiser, which match up pretty well with what we saw on the ice.
The offense-driving numbers are, again, not great. But they’re not particularly different from the rest of the Blackhawks during this time. The high dangers assists per 60 being only somewhat below average is hopefully an indicator that, with a better team, Kaiser could flip into the positive easily as playmaking has always been solid for him. Again, he’s never been a production monster, but just a little bit would be helpful.
Despite being one of the better skaters and puck handlers among the defensive group, Kaiser had some transition issues. For zone entries, the primary factor was that he didn’t try it very much: he had just 4.62 per 60, the second lowest among Blackhawks defensemen. Some of it was a lack of attempts while sometimes is a mishandle of the puck in the neutral zone, leading to loss of possession. Technically only Vlasic and Jones were above average, but being that low — especially when his carry-in success was 40 percent, third behind only Korchinski and Jones — is disappointing.
Kaiser was more of a mixed bag on zone exits, which are typically more important to defenders, as they are often relied on for defensive zone breakouts. He excelled in the areas of the game where a smart stick and good position were used to gain possession such as retrievals, with the highlights being his 49 percent retrieval success percentage (behind only Vlasic) and his 10.48 retrievals leading to exits per 60 rate (behind Vlasic and Jones). However, when an exit wasn’t connected to a retrieval, the numbers drop considerably, and Kaiser fumbled many passes and carry-outs when the exit started with a teammate. His clear numbers (3.06 per 60) were just below average as well (above only Korchinski). The latter was likely due to lack of experience in NHL speed and pressure situations and will hopefully improve with time — we already saw some in the smaller sample of games Kaiser played towards the end of the season.
The other area where Kaiser had some issues was zone-entry defense, where he didn’t do a particularly good job defending the blue line — a fact made worse by how often he was targeted. This is an area in which Kaiser excelled in college, but he either didn’t read plays as fast or he was out maneuvered to a degree that put him on the negative side of things more often than not. To be fair, basically everyone was a turnstile for zone entries against on the Blackhawks and very few were aggressively successful at preventing opposing players from walking in unaccosted.
Interestingly, Kaiser was better at entry defense when on the penalty kill, basically top-four on the Blackhawks at denials. And he was one of only two who regularly got the puck going the other way.
After those 21 games — as well as two more in mid-December — Kaiser was sent down to Rockford to find consistency with the high level of play he showed at camp and in the early games.
And that seems to be exactly what Kaiser did. After a short period, he rose to be the top defender in Rockford, playing in all situations and key minutes for the IceHogs. You also check out the SCH prospects tag, where we followed Kaiser and the other IceHogs throughout the season when they were in Rockford.
It was thanks to his impressive play with the IceHogs that Kaiser got another late season call-up with the Blackhawks mid-way through March, and he looked really good during those nine games. He especially made use of his speed and smart stick to break-up plays, and his transition ability was much more consistent. After several good defensive games from Kaiser, Richardson had a lot of positives to say about the rookie:
[Wyatt] has been using his skating, much like at the end of last season and at the beginning of this year. [He’s] confident in his ability to kill plays… He’s been doing that without running all over the place. I think he started chasing a little bit before he went down to the minors, and going down to Rockford really helped him settle his game down. [He can] use that skating ability to get out of trouble — or help his teammates — instead of getting into it. It’s been impressive.
– Richardson on March 30
What does all this mean for Kaiser going forward?
Kaiser seems to still be highly valued by the organization: not only did he start the season with the Blackhawks after having one of the most impressive training camps, once he was sent down to Rockford, it took no time at all before Kaiser was getting the most minutes on the IceHogs. His performance in the latter stint, albeit brief, must have made the higher-ups in the organization happy with his progress — Richardson definitely was, if his praise from the quote above is anything to go by. It certainly looks like Kaiser is all but penciled in for the Blackhawks roster next season. The only hang-up could be is if Kaiser is involved in a trade of some kind, as the Blackhawks will certainly be looking to make moves for young forwards and their glut of defensive prospects are their best bargaining tool.
Either way, despite a rocky start to his NHL career, it’s obvious that Kaiser has the skill set to play in the NHL if he can find the consistency that he showcased in the NCAA and AHL. Whether it’s with the Blackhawks long-term remains the bigger question.