Alex Vlasic thrived with Seth Jones last season — a remarkable feat considering the ineptitude of the Blackhawks around them.
This season, however, coach Luke Richardson seems keen on separating Vlasic and Jones.
The Hawks appear likely to start the regular season Tuesday with a defensive depth chart featuring Jones paired with Alec Martinez and Vlasic paired with T.J. Brodie.
Connor Murphy and Wyatt Kaiser would then operate as the third pairing, although either Nolan Allan or Isaak Phillips will temporarily fill Kaiser’s spot until he recovers from his recent health scare.
Richardson has mentioned he will reunite Vlasic and Jones on occasion when the Hawks face particularly tough matchups, such as those the Oilers will throw their way in the third game of the regular season next week.
He also seems slightly worried about the fact the Martinez-Jones and Vlasic-Brodie pairings haven’t gotten that many preseason reps together, since Martinez has missed some days of training camp with a minor injury and giving Kevin Korchinski opportunities to prove himself was a higher priority for a while.
Nevertheless, he said Friday he “likes the idea” of those combinations. That means Vlasic and Brodie, who are both left-handed shots, will need to continue getting accustomed to each other.
Brodie has actually spent most of his career playing his off side, the right side — mostly next to Morgan Reilly on the Maple Leafs the last few years and next to Mark Giordano on the Flames before that. Therefore, Vlasic actually has a bigger adjustment to make; he must angle his ‘D’-to-‘D’ passes differently than he did with the right-handed Jones.
“I’ve got to get used to putting some passes on his forehand,” Vlasic said. “He’s a great defenseman and definitely makes it pretty easy on me.”
The Hawks would be content if Vlasic simply replicated his success from last season, but they would love it if he progressed further along his seemingly exponential development curve and evolved into a two-way star. He did focus on improving his shot and becoming more of an offensive threat during his summer training.
“Vlasic seems to be just taking another step again,” Richardson said. “He seems really confident skating with the puck, and he covers so much ice out there. We’re getting him more confident being vocal on the ice, too.”
For Brodie, meanwhile, the Hawks hope he can rediscover his earlier-career form. The 34-year-old Canadian was an analytics darling for many years until things went south last season in Toronto.
In 2022-23, for example, he was the sixth-best defenseman in the league in terms of defending opponents’ zone-entry attempts, and he also excelled at retrieving dumped-in pucks and successfully clearing or exiting the zone, per All Three Zones. Last season, his numbers in those categories dropped substantially.
He hopes some tweaks he has gradually made to his skating stride will make his 2024-25 performance more closely resemble his 2022-23 results.
“I tried to focus a little bit more [this summer] on the speed aspect, trying to get that pop,” Brodie said. “Getting older, it’s something that you tend to lose, so I’m trying to stay on top of that.”
“It’s mostly [because of] how skating has changed since I was growing up. It used to be long, smooth strides. Now it’s almost like you’re jumping across the ice instead of pushing and gliding. The whole technique has changed.”
The idea is that if his skates spend less time on the ice, they’ll encounter less friction. On the other hand, the reduction in gliding means it takes more strides to travel a certain distance, expending more energy.
Another challenge has been adjusting to the Hawks’ defensive systems, which differ from the Leafs’.
“It’s just a matter of not overthinking it,” Brodie said. “When in doubt, use your hockey sense, and just be patient.”