The Blackhawks returned to the practice ice at the Fifth Third Arena after taking Sunday off, with Monday’s agenda including an intra-squad scrimmage.
Yeah, it’s only a preseason scrimmage. But it can be considered a good thing that, of the five goals scored in it, a pair of Blackhawks first-round picks scored four of them:
Lukas Reichel’s name came up plenty during the action on Monday morning, with these goals among his standout moments:
A quick aside: at the very start of this clip, watch Wyatt Kaiser instruct Paul Ludwinski to get out from behind the net and cover the point, instead of Kaiser himself skating out of position. It’s a subtle thing, yes, but that seems indicative of the hockey IQ within Kaiser. Seth Jones talked about the Kaiser’s confidence, and moments like that seem to support what Jones said here:
Anyway, back to Reichel:
And now it’s time for the Bedard highlight section of the article:
Thus concludes today’s edition of the Connor Bedard highlight section. Check back for more this week — and all season long.
Two other items of note from Monday. First, Alex Vlasic left the ice during the scrimmage but that was due to being caught with a high stick and it’s not expected to be anything serious. Additionally, there was a noticeable conversation between assistant coach Kevin Dean and young blue-liner Kevin Korchinski after the scrimmage, and Ben Pope of the Sun-Times asked Luke Richardson about it: