What coach Jeff Blashill could bring to Blackhawks: Prospects, veterans, NHL experience

The Chicago Blackhawks are believed to be wrapping up their coaching search.

As the wait continues for Blackhawks general manager Kyle Davidson to officially bring the search to its conclusion, we have some time to dig deeper into one of the few definitively known candidates. Other than Anders Sörensen, the other known candidate is Jeff Blashill.

The Athletic’s Max Bultman, who covered Blashill’s time as Detroit Red Wings head coach, and Scott Powers, who covers the Blackhawks, discuss Blashill and what he could bring the Blackhawks in four specific areas.

Coaching young players

Powers: The Blackhawks are going to be young for some time. They ended last season with 15 players 25 years or younger in their NHL lineup. Seven were drafted within the last three years. There’s a chance the Blackhawks could be even younger next season, with even more of their recent early-round picks entering the roster pool. Nick Lardis could be the surprise out of this training camp. By the end of the next season, Sacha Boisvert, another first-round pick, could be in the NHL, too. A steady flow of prospects is incoming.

The Blackhawks expect their next coach to play those young players and eventually win with them. That can be a complicated task, as the Blackhawks’ past two coaches, Luke Richardson and Anders Sörensen, experienced. As fast and talented as some of the young Blackhawks are, they still have a lot to learn at the NHL level. There can be a balancing act between what’s best for the prospect and what’s best for the team.

Davidson had an interesting quote in May about what he’s seeking from his next coach.

“I think a coach working with younger players, that will be key because we’re going to be a younger team moving forward,” Davidson said. “You saw a peak to that at the end of the season, but I don’t necessarily think that has to color what we go out and get. We’re going to talk to a bunch of very qualified candidates that we feel very passionate about. It’s going to be determined in that room and in the interviews, if it feels right, how they approach things and if that’s the right fit for us. In the end, we want someone that’s going to come in and help these young players that we’re very excited about, that we think have a ton of promise. They’re going to need someone that’s going to allow them to develop and allow them to grow, and through that, grow our status in the win column. That’s something that’s all connected. We’re looking to check a number of boxes there but ultimately want someone that’s excited about what’s going on in Chicago.”

Bultman: Blashill has a lot of experience in this department from his time in Detroit. He oversaw the Red Wings during their teardown years. All the outside focus was on draft picks, and he was still the coach as several of those picks reached the NHL.

If Blashill does end up in Chicago, expect him to hold his young players to a set of standards. He believes in teaching habits — which is highly relevant to young players who are just getting into the NHL and have probably been able to get away with more than they will going forward.

He’s not going to let players get away with cheating for offense to pad their point totals. While everyone feels good about scoring, doing it that way is not in anyone’s best interest in the long term.

Inevitably, building habits does involve holding players accountable, which is where you find that fine line. A young player may have to earn his way up the lineup a little before getting prime deployments and won’t be guaranteed his spot there forever if his habits wane. But Blashill certainly knows how important young players’ growth is to the success of a rebuilding organization, and you can expect him to give those key young players plenty of opportunities to succeed.

Filip Hronek was playing 20-plus minutes a night very early into his career — even if there were some ebbs as he adjusted to the league. Moritz Seider was a horse from Day 1, and Blashill played him accordingly. Even players such as Anthony Mantha, who struggled with consistency, got plenty of chances to figure things out and played the best hockey of his career under Blashill.

Developing young players

Powers: If the Blackhawks’ rebuild is going to someday result in a Stanley Cup win, their young players have to develop into good-to-great players. Davidson’s plan from the beginning hinged on drafting and developing. Over his first three drafts as GM, he’s made eight selections in the first round, five in the second round and eight in the third round. He has even more coming this year, including the No. 3 pick. Maybe Davidson will add a few veterans around them in time, but the bulk of his future roster is expected to be built from those drafts.

The Blackhawks do believe they have their star in the making to lead that group. Winning the draft lottery in 2023 and selecting Connor Bedard was the focal point of Davidson’s plan, and it worked. It’s difficult to say that Bedard has been underwhelming — he’s accumulated 128 points in his first 150 NHL games and is 19 years old — but he hasn’t met the hype that followed him after his major-junior career. Helping Bedard to that next level and developing him into an elite player will be part of the equation for the Blackhawks’ next coach. They need Bedard to be elite and at least a few others to be somewhere near that level.

Bultman: Blashill never had a young player of Bedard’s talent level in Detroit, so that would be a fascinating new situation for him. But he’s been around Nikita Kucherov the last three years in Tampa and would have the advantage of being able to relay to Bedard all the little details that allow Kucherov’s all-world talent to translate to all-world results.

The elements of the previous category are relevant here too: Sustainable, winning habits are going to be an emphasis, not just the bottom-line scoring numbers. There are always going to be opportunities in games for players such as Bedard and Frank Nazar to use their skill. But an emphasis for Blashill would be teaching them the smartest moments to do so — and which moments are better served by simply living another day. You can read more of his philosophy on that idea here.

I hinted at this with Mantha, but many of the young players Blashill coached played the best hockey of their careers under him, even after leaving Detroit for better teams. Tyler Bertuzzi never eclipsed the 30 goals or 62 points he had in Blashill’s final season there. Mantha averaged close to a point per game in an injury-shortened 2019-20 season and put up 48 points in 67 games the year before that. Andreas Athanasiou never put up a 30-goal season anywhere else.

Granted, some of that is likely about how much more ice time (and power-play time) they were getting in Detroit compared to stronger teams. But there are few (if any) examples of players who left Detroit under Blashill and really popped elsewhere.

Managing veterans

Powers: I wouldn’t say the Blackhawks dressing room was dysfunctional over the past few years, but there were some speed bumps for their coach to maneuver. That’s not unexpected given all the losing and prioritizing young players, who make mistakes and can’t realistically be held to the same standards as longer-tenured players. That can make managing veterans challenging.

Notably, Taylor Hall was frustrated to be a healthy scratch and felt there hadn’t been enough communication from Richardson before it happened. Sörensen had to deal with an unhappy Seth Jones, who wanted to play elsewhere at all costs and didn’t seem to mind burning some bridges on his way out of Chicago. The Blackhawks have a vocal and engaging captain in Nick Foligno, whom the next Blackhawks coach can lean on to navigate some of those waters.

Ultimately, this may not be an issue, but the Blackhawks’ next coach has to be aware of it. Are you playing the veterans too much, even though you know the rebuild plan? Are you giving the young players enough trust? Are you keeping them accountable? Are you communicating with everyone? The Blackhawks job, especially now, is about much more than winning.

Bultman: One of the criticisms of Blashill from fans in Detroit was a perception that he deferred too much to veterans.

He did occasionally scratch underperforming vets for a game or two, but my read on the situation was mainly that those veterans had generally already built up the habits and reliability Blashill was looking for. He could count on them to play a certain way and not cheat for offense, even if they weren’t producing.

Blashill came up through the USHL, NCAA and AHL, so his background is (or was) more in coaching younger players. But he has been around an excellent veteran group in Tampa for the last three years and has had time to reflect on his years in Detroit. So, it will be interesting to see how that all informs his perspective at his next job, whenever it comes up.

NHL coaching

Powers: Not many new head coaches jump into the NHL and have the league figured out right away. Whether they’ve been in college, AHL or anywhere else, coaching in the NHL is usually a different animal. Decisions about ice time, deployment, matchups and more can be accentuated and be the difference between winning and losing. Since the Blackhawks fired Joel Quenneville in 2018, they have ridden the waves of inexperienced NHL coaches. From Jeremy Colliton to Derek King to Richardson to Sörensen, the Blackhawks’ last four coaches didn’t arrive with any NHL head-coaching experience. They were learning on the job.

Davidson never said publicly he’s looking for an coach with NHL experience. David Carle was a candidate. Sörensen continues to be a candidate. It may not be the deciding factor, but I would imagine some NHL coaching experience would benefit the next coach.

Bultman: Blashill has been in the NHL for the last decade as a head coach and an assistant. So he certainly qualifies as experienced.

That said, he’s probably still a bit tough to assess in this category. The Red Wings went to the playoffs in his first year at the helm, but shortly after that, they started a full-scale rebuild, making it hard to assess Blashill’s coaching with rosters that were seldom up to NHL standard. Chicago is sort of in that same category right now, but the Blackhawks at least seem to be further along in the process than Detroit was for most of Blashill’s tenure.

The three years in Tampa came on a team built to win now, and you have to assume he’ll take plenty of lessons and ideas from the Lightning to his next job, but it’s hard to know what those will be.

A team hiring Blashill will be betting on his presence, communication skills and ability to blend winning and development at lower levels, believing that will someday happen in the NHL, too. He will hold players accountable in the name of building winning habits that, in theory, should pay off over the long arc of those players’ careers — and for the teams they play on.

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