The Blackhawks crunch of preseason games ahead of the regular season continues on Sunday evening in the Twin Cities, with Chicago facing the Minnesota Wild.
A rebound performance unfolded in St. Louis on Saturday night, as the Blackhawks erased some of the sting of a dreadful preseason opener by beating the Blues 4-2 on the front end of this weekend back-to-back.
Plenty of expected NHL regulars will be on the ice for Chicago in this game, based on the roster the Blackhawks released for the game on Sunday morning:
The oldest player on the Chicago blue line is 24-year-old Alex Vlasic, indicative of the organization’s youth movement, because the seven blue-liners listed there include six with very real NHL aspirations this season. The forward group has much more NHL experience in it, and will give us our first glimpse of offseason addition Andre Burakovsky.
Minnesota’s lineup isn’t quite as top-heavy, with several of the Wild’s top producers from the prior season not included in their game roster. Names like Kirill Kaprizov, Matt Boldy, Marco Rossi and Brock Faber aren’t going to be playing in this game, although we have another case of a few old friends who are:
And I regret to inform some of the readers here that, yes, that is the son of former Blackhawks defenseman Jaroslav Spacek in the Minnesota Wild lineup as well. Father Time is coming for all of us.
By this time next week, we should have a pretty good idea of who’ll be breaking camp with the parent club and which players will be starting the season with the IceHogs. There isn’t a ton of time left for those on the fringe to state their case, and there’s no better place to make that argument than on the ice against a divisional opponent.
Let’s go Hawks.
How to Watch
When: 5 p.m. CT
Where: Grand Casino Arena, St. Paul
TV: CHSN (For people in the Chicagoland area)
Webstream: ESPN+ (This is for people outside of the Chicagoland area)
Radio: WGN 720