Why is Andrew Mangiapane getting more playing time with Blackhawks than Nick Lardis?

Posted March 14, 2026 11:13 am

By Mark Lazerus

LAS VEGAS — Andrew Mangiapane does a lot of things that many Chicago Blackhawks players don’t do. He has good straight-line speed, and he uses it to skate in, well, straight lines. He’s direct. North-south. He goes to the net, as he showed Monday night when he crashed the crease hard and had a Ryan Donato centering pass bank off him and into the net.

Beyond that, he’s as comfortable digging out a puck in the corner as he is digging through a post-whistle skirmish. He has some sandpaper to his game, as they say. He’s more Tyler Bertuzzi than Connor Bedard, and that’s a good thing. The Blackhawks don’t have a lot of Tyler Bertuzzis, and every team needs a few.

But Mangiapane is also a few weeks shy of his 30th birthday, and he struggled so much this season in Edmonton that the Oilers put him on waivers and demoted him to the AHL. At his age, he simply isn’t part of Kyle Davidson’s grand design. So it’s perfectly reasonable to wonder why Nick Lardis — a 20-year-old sharpshooter who’s a year removed from a 71-goal season in the OHL — played just seven minutes on the fourth line Monday and Thursday, while Mangiapane played twice as many on the third line. After all, wasn’t half the point of clearing out veterans such as Jason Dickinson and Nick Foligno at the trade deadline to open opportunities for more young players knocking on the NHL door?

Well, it’s quite simple, really. Davidson might be playing a very long game. But head coach Jeff Blashill isn’t. He wants to win now. And even more, he wants to set up his team to win next season. Mangiapane has another year on his contract, is a former 35-goal scorer and, in his eyes, fills an immediate need better than Lardis at the moment.

So the veteran gets priority. For now, at least.

“The majority of the players, if not all the players in the room, are going to be with us next season and beyond,” Blashill said before the Blackhawks completed their season sweep of the Utah Mammoth on Thursday night. “What we’re trying to do is build our individual game and our team game so we can grow during these 18 games. And I talked to these guys about this after the trade deadline, how important and meaningful these games are for us to grow. For that, it doesn’t matter what the age says on their birth certificates. All those guys are important, (and) that we continue to grow them.”

Still, it sends something of a mixed message to a fan base that’s justifiably antsy to get past the stopgap-journeymen stage of the rebuild. Lardis — and Anton Frondell, should he arrive later this month, and Roman Kantserov, should he arrive in the fall — are the future. Mangiapane isn’t.

But the way Blashill sees it, a rising tide lifts all boats. And Mangiapane might be able to help get all the young players — already established young stars included — more experience playing meaningful hockey next season.

“I get the question,” Blashill said. “We want to develop (young) guys, and some of that is opportunity. But you’ve got to remember, in my opinion, we’re developing a lot of players on our team. I would put at the foremost of that the guys at the top of the lineup. We’re developing Connor Bedard, developing Frank Nazar into learning how to play that type of winning hockey that you have to play.

“In order to do that, you have to be competitive in the games you’re in and learn how to win those games. That’s why we’re putting guys in spots where we think they can be the most successful. I don’t know who we would put in (Mangiapane’s) spot necessarily, but I think it’s important we develop Mango into helping us win games, because we would love to not have to go through this learning process at the beginning of the year. We’d like to do it now.”

It’s certainly within the realm of possibility for Mangiapane, should he struggle down the stretch, to get bought out this summer. Davidson has more than enough cap room to do that. Maybe Mangiapane goes down in Blackhawks lore with the likes of Anders Bjork and Austin Wagner, deadline throw-ins who briefly looked like possible pieces before disappearing forever.

But so far, Mangiapane looks like a keeper. He scored in each of his first two games with the Blackhawks, and though he didn’t get on the scoresheet Thursday night, he had one of the team’s better looks and continued to be a factor physically. He got into a shoving match with Utah defenseman Sean Durzi in front of the Mammoth net in the second period and was generally engaged throughout the game.

Given how nasty Monday’s game was, and given that this was the teams’ third meeting in 12 days, the game was surprisingly tame. But other than Bedard and MacKenzie Weegar getting into it a couple of times, Mangiapane was the only real agitator the Blackhawks had.

“He’s done a good job for us,” Blashill said. “He’s a good fit for what we need. He’s a real direct, north-south player. Sometimes we can get a little bit too east-west. We have some young skill that can play that way at times — that’s a good thing — but also you need a direct element to your game, and he definitely does that.”

With goals hard to come by, Blashill started double-shifting Bedard in the second period. That gave him a chance to play with Lardis and the speedy Landon Slaggert. So there are other ways to get a player like Lardis — whose vision and shooting seem to match up so well with Bedard’s playmaking ability — some better looks throughout a game while still leaning on the veterans higher up in the lineup.

For now, that’s going to have to be enough for Lardis, who showed flashes of offense but was only modestly productive in a top-nine role earlier in the season. He has five goals and three assists in 24 games.

The Blackhawks have points in five of their past six games, have been competitive in every game since the Olympic break, and are 2-1-1 since the trade deadline, when they lost Foligno, Dickinson and Connor Murphy. It’s all but inconceivable that the Blackhawks — 8 points back of the Los Angeles Kings for the second wild-card spot and with five other teams to leapfrog — make a run at the playoffs this spring. But Blashill is repeatedly driving the point home that these games still mean something.

Playing Utah three times in 12 days gave the young Blackhawks a tiny taste of what a playoff series can feel like in terms of pre-scouts and adjustments. And playing teams that are fighting for playoff positioning, like Utah and the Dallas Stars, lends some weight to otherwise meaningless games. Every bit of experience gives the Blackhawks a better chance of avoiding a similar fate next season.

“For sure,” Bertuzzi said. “Especially getting points and getting wins, too. I don’t know how many games we have left, but we have a lot of learning to still do, and these games are important for us down the stretch to learn as a group and keep trying to get wins.”

For now, that means the grit and reliability of Mangiapane trumps the potential of Lardis.

And what of Sam Lafferty, another quintessential NHL journeyman, who just turned 31 last week? It’s been easy to forget he is still on the roster at times this season. From Dec. 28 through March 8, he played in just two games — that’s 23 healthy scratches in a 25-game span. But Lafferty has earned plenty of plaudits for his hard work, good attitude and preparation for playing time that often seemed like it would never come.

Now it’s here. At least, for the time being. Lafferty played in his second straight game Thursday, something that hadn’t happened since Christmas. Of course, Bedard’s extra shifts came at the expense of Lafferty, who got only two shifts in the second period and played just 8:05 overall.

“Certainly, it’s challenging,” he said. “You want to play. You want to be in the games. I’m a hockey player; I want to be part of that. But you want to be a great teammate, too, be as positive as you can every day and work as hard as you can. Those are really the only things you can control. It’s great to be back in the lineup now, and I just want to continue to give my very best. I have a lot to be grateful for. I haven’t gotten down. It’s frustrating at times, but as long as you keep your focus, there’s no reason to think like that.”

Lafferty is a pending unrestricted free agent, and when you’re out of sight, you’re out of mind in the NHL. So this closing kick is a big chance for him to show the rest of the league he’s still worth a roster spot. In his limited playing time, Lafferty has some of the best numbers on the team. In 21 games, the Blackhawks have outscored opponents 7-5 with him on the ice (the best ratio on the team), controlling the lion’s share of shot attempts, scoring chances and high-danger chances. It’s not the biggest sample, but that can only help his case in free agency this summer.

Whether Lafferty can stay in the lineup for the final 17 games remains to be seen. Oliver Moore’s injury, which is expected to keep him out at least a few weeks, opened that door. But with Frondell and maybe even Sacha Boisvert (who was scratched for Boston University’s Hockey East Tournament opener) potentially joining the team for the final few weeks, he’ll have to prove — like Mangiapane does — that he can be valuable enough in the present to stave off the future a little longer.

“Keeping it simple,” Lafferty said. “I understand what my game is as a player and don’t deviate from that. Just do those things, try to be really good in the structure, really good defensively. That’s something we’re really working on as a team and something we’re doing a much better job of. I’ve been fortunate that every time I’m in the lineup, I’m playing with guys that have a ton of speed and great attributes that help drive the play and offensive-zone possession and things like that. It’s about understanding how we can work together to make that happen.”