Things looked a little different at Thursday’s Blackhawks practice following Tuesday’s first game of the season on the road against the Utah Hockey Club.
And the early projections indicate that one player who was watching from the press box on Tuesday night is going to be back in the lineup for Friday’s game against the Winnipeg Jets.
That player is not 2020 first-round pick Lukas Reichel, though:
Instead, it looks like Andreas Athanasiou will slot in on the fourth line in place of Craig Smith. The other major lineup shuffle sees Nick Foligno on the top line with Connor Bedard and Teuvo Teravainen while Ilya Mikheyev heads down to the third line with Jason Dickinson and Joey Anderson. That lineup complexion was a mid-game switch on Tuesday night and it appears coach Luke Richardson liked it enough to continue it heading into this weekend’s back-to-back games in Winnipeg and Edmonton. With Laurent Brossoit still sidelined by injury, Arvid Soderblom is expected to get his first start of the season this weekend:
One of the bigger gripes from Tuesday’s season opener in Utah was the presence of multiple fourth liners on the Blackhawks’ second power-play unit. Thursday’s practice saw a mild shuffle of that PP2 unit:
So, here’s a quick summary of Pat Maroon’s power-play effectiveness over the last few seasons. In the 2018-19 season with the St. Louis Blues, he skated 143 minutes on the power play and had a solid 11 points (2 G, 9 A). By 2021-22 in Tampa, it was down to 106 minutes despite playing 81 games that season and he tallied just six points (3 G, 3 A) with the man advantage. In 2022-23, he had just one assist in SEVEN TOTAL MINUTES of power-play ice time with the Lightning. Last season, with 43 minutes of power-play ice time in 51 games with the Bruins and Wild, he had all of one assist. Obviously the idea here is that the 6-foot-3, 234-pound Maroon will be an ample screen in front of the opposing net, but the numbers above suggest any skepticism of this idea will remain fair until the on-ice product proves otherwise.
Richardson offered the following thoughts on his line combinations at practice, as reported on Twitter by Ben Pope of the Sun-Times:
[UPDATE] Also on Thursday, Wyatt Kaiser was activated from injured reserve while Isaak Phillips was sent down to Rockford to make room for Kaiser on the active roster. Phillips cleared waivers earlier this week, allowing him to be sent back to the AHL.