The first preseason game is in the books as the Hawks fell to the Blues 4-1.
St. Louis Goals: Ryan O’Reilly PPG, Justin Faulk PPG, Griffin Luce, Nikita Alexandrov PPG
Chicago Goal: Cole Guttman
Takeaways
Andreas Athanasiou:
Boy, can this guy skate. While he didn’t get on the board this game, it felt like every time he was on the ice he was in the mix. I think as the season goes on he will be a nice piece to put with Kane as they had a few nice odd men breaks together, but both Binnington and Zherenko had their numbers.
Kevin Korchinski:
If there were any questions regarding why the Hawks moved in to the first round of the draft for this kid, I think we are getting the answer. The 18 year-old prospect looked like he had already played some NHL hockey. The confidence he showed skating out of the defensive zone with the puck and taking it into the offensive zone was extremely impressive. He looked very strong on the puck and even had the awareness to sneak down to the slot to try and create scoring chances a few times through out the night. I really hope he sticks with the team till the last possible moment so he can absorb as much as possible before going back to Seattle and having a big year in juniors.
Aggression:
When Luke Richardson was brought in one of the things he said in his introductory conference was this team is going to be tough to play against and the other teams are going to hate playing this team. I felt like there was a nice small glimpse of that here. Guys going harder into the corners than in years past, players not afraid to mix it up out there, and then you have Samuel Savoie, who took the Andrew Shaw approach and just got under the Blues skin all night. Being aggressive is going to be important this season and happy to see this ideology is being bought into already.
Penalty Kill:
This was the killer tonight as the Blues scored 3 of their 4 goals on the power play. I am not going to look too much into this as it is still super early into Richardson putting his system into place and two of those goals where just well placed deflections. However, they now have more than enough tape to take into the next practice and they can see exactly what needs to be fixed.
Future Defensive Unit:
If our young defensemen are giving the right amount of time to develop, the future d-core is going to be massive. You have Jones at 6’4”, Vlasic at 6’6”, Korchinski at 6’1” and Ethan Del Mastro at 6”4. Build this defensive system up and then have these giants out there shutting it down, this will be an extremely hard team to play against. Much like Korchinski, Del Mastro looked great out there and I think he is a must watch as he could be a great asset to this team when he’s ready.
Overall, I didn’t hate what I saw from this team tonight. By all means they aren’t going to be good. However, at 5 on 5 they seemed to do hold their own, and if they can keep games close and not get blown out every single game, I will call that a successful season.
Tomorrow the Hawks take on Detroit at the beautiful Little Caesars Arena. There is no local tv broadcast (might be available on ESPN +) but you can listen to the game on WGN Radio. Highlight for this game will be expecting Lukas Reichel to get in on the action.
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