The Blackhawks will soon be young, but at the moment, they are old.
Veteran defenseman Seth Jones, who will turn 30 in a few weeks, looked around Fifth Third Arena during the first on-ice day of training camp Thursday and saw plenty of guys older than him.
Newly named captain Nick Foligno is 36, turning 37 next month. Newly signed defensemen Alec Martinez and T.J. Brodie are 37 and 34, respectively. Newly signed forwards Pat Maroon and Craig Smith are 36 and 35, respectively. There’s also 32-year-olds Taylor Hall and Petr Mrazek, 31-year-olds Connor Murphy and Laurent Brossoit and 30-year-olds Andreas Athanasiou and Teuvo Teravainen.
Of course, plenty of prospects aged 18 to 23 also populate the Hawks’ 53-man camp roster, and they represent the future of the franchise. Their prospect pool was recently ranked the best in the NHL by The Athletic, after all.
Very few of those prospects will crack the NHL roster this season, however, since general manager Kyle Davidson brought in so many free agents this summer — including many of the aforementioned names — to give the youngsters time to ripen in the AHL. As a result, the Hawks’ projected 2024-25 NHL roster is actually the sixth-oldest in the league, with an average age of 28.7.
“The key for us is we’re a little bit older, and I think what’s really going to help our road record this year, to be honest,” Jones said, referencing the Hawks’ franchise-record 22-game road losing streak last season.
“Being a little bit more veteran, understanding that we might have to win a road game 2-1 or 1-0 — or go to overtime and be OK with it and be comfortable — it’s going to be important for us this year.”
It’s not like external expectations for this Hawks team are high, though, even though they should be more competitive. Their season point total betting line on FanDuel sits at 74.5 points, which would mark a 22-point improvement over last season but still ranks fourth-to-last in the league.
“We want to play meaningful games,” Jones added. “But we want to take strides on our consistency, too. We would play a week of decent hockey — three games — and then we would fall off a cliff. It’s hard to mentally stay in it; it’s hard to go through that roller coaster. So we want to get to a level of play at a level of consistency where, even if you lose a game, you still liked things that you did in the game.”
Day one
Five minutes into the first camp session Thursday, the Hawks were already scrimmaging.
Coach Luke Richardson said he had told the players to show up in shape, and he was pleased with the pace of play. The scrimmage also showcased his initial ideas for the forward lines, although he plans to experiment with different combinations during the coming days before the first preseason game next Wednesday.
Flanking Connor Bedard on the first line was Taylor Hall and Tyler Bertuzzi. Philipp Kurashev was interestingly slotted in as the second-line center — a position he hasn’t played much — between Lukas Reichel and Teuvo Teravainen. In a later practice group, Jason Dickinson centered a checking line with Nick Foligno and Ilya Mikheyev.
“It’s hard to say that we want to have the puck the whole time when we’re playing each other now, because technically we do,” Richardson quipped. “But when we get into an exhibition game, we want that mentality — to have the puck as much as possible.”
This story will be updated.