During Jeff Blashill’s introductory news conference Tuesday at the United Center, the new Chicago Blackhawks coach was asked the most relevant, to-the-point question in this “tough” sports town:
How long will it take to get to a championship level?
“Is that my ‘Welcome to Chicago’ moment?” Blashill said as a smile lifted a corner of his mouth.
Yes, it was.
Congratulations on landing the gig. Now the clock’s running.
The Hawks have entrusted the next stage of the rebuild to a coach who won championships in his first season with the USHL’s Indiana Ice (2008-09) and AHL’s Grand Rapids Griffins (2012-13) and made the playoffs as a first-year NHL coach with the Detroit Red Wings (2015-16) — but flamed out by Year 7 (2021-22).
After a three-year stint on Tampa Bay Lightning coach Jon Cooper’s staff, Blashill gets another chance to sit in the big chair.
“Every single coaching job in the NHL is a great job,” Blashill said, “but for me, this job at this moment with this team was the exact job that I wanted and for a multitude of reasons.”
The 51-year-old former college goalie said he did his research on the Hawks — from Chairman/CEO Danny Wirtz down to the “excellent job” done by scouts — and believes “we have a shared vision of how we’re going to get to the top.”
“We have a number of great young players in the system and also young players that are going to be with us to start the season in Chicago and knocking on the door in Rockford,” Blashill said as his wife, Erica, and children Teddy, Josie and Owen looked on from the audience. “We have an opportunity to have depth at every position and, honestly, potential superstars at every position, and that’s very unique in this league.
“My job now is to help mold them, teach them, coach them, lead them to becoming great winners in this league. It’s a job I look forward to.”
General manager Kyle Davidson said it’s a job for which Blashill is suited.
“We wanted someone who would grow with this team,” Davidson said, “someone that would instill, teach and hold our players accountable to the fundamental habits required to winning in the NHL. Someone who would embrace the challenge of working with and developing a young group of players and also someone who shared the same vision that we did for the players and prospects that we’ve accumulated.
“In Jeff, we found a candidate that checked all those boxes.”
Here are five things we learned about Blashill and the Hawks from Tuesday’s news conference.
1. How did the search land on Jeff Blashill?
Davidson didn’t get into specifics about how many people the Hawks interviewed. They reportedly kicked the tires on David Carle and Mike Sullivan, but Carle opted for a multiyear contract extension with the University of Denver and Sullivan took the New York Rangers job — which led to former Rangers assistant Michael Peca’s exit and availability to join Blashill’s staff.
Davidson said it took months for his staff to craft the criteria for the 42nd head coach in franchise history, but “we didn’t want to put a box around it with no NHL experience, a lot of NHL experience.”
Davidson learned about Blashill by interviewing him on — among other things — his time as Red Wings coach, which ended with his firing.
“It felt like a no-brainer to tap into his experience and tap into what he’s lived and what he’s been through in the NHL as a head coach,” Davidson said. “Getting in the room and learning about him and learning how he was going to approach this job, that time in Detroit as an NHL head coach certainly set him up for approaching this a different way and learning from that first tenure.”
2. What is Blashill’s style?
“I want to score a lot and give up a little — let’s start there,” he said. “We want to make sure, when we don’t have the puck, we’re a pressure team. We want to take away other teams’ time and space.
“You can do that a number of ways: through your gapping and your squeezing and using your defensemen to take the puck out of the opponent’s hands as quickly as possible in our end, trying to spend as little time in our end as possible, making sure we’re aggressive on the forecheck and making it feel like the other team has to earn every inch of ice.
“When you have the puck, (it’s) making sure we’re predictable to each other, and by being predictable to each other, we can play faster. As you play faster, now your talent comes through.”
Before Blashill’s first NHL head coaching job, he spent the 2011-12 season as an assistant under Mike Babcock, who had won the 2008 Stanley Cup with the Red Wings. And as mentioned, he spent the last three seasons as a Lightning assistant to Cooper, who has two Cups.
“Some of what I’ll take from them is schematics and X’s and O’s, but some of it is just different ways to lead and do things,” Blashill said. “Coop has a unique way about him that I’ve really enjoyed the last three years, being able to observe and see the connection he has with his players. It was a reminder to me that that’s when I’m at my best, with that same kind of connection with players.”
Hawks captain Nick Foligno, who attended Blashill’s introduction, said that aligns with Blashill’s reputation.
“I hear in circles, anyone that’s playing for him really likes him, which is an important piece,” Foligno said. “He’s respected. … It’s never like, ‘Oh, he’s the greatest guy.’
“He’s really direct and he’s approachable. He’s a guy that knows what he wants. You appreciate that about a coach.”
That’s not to say Blashill tries to be buddies with players, Foligno clarified.
“He has the ability to be stern,” he said, “and this is his way and we’re going to get to his standard.”
3. Who will be on Blashill’s staff?
Defensive coach Kevin Dean is out. Peca is in, and Blashill will keep former interim coach Anders Sörensen and goalie coach Jimmy Waite.
However, with the exception of Waite, the exact roles aren’t clear, and Blashill has one more spot to fill.
Davidson said during the coaching search that Sörensen, a candidate for the job, would be sticking around in some capacity no matter what.
“I’ve known Anders for a long time,” Blashill said. “I have tons of belief in him as a coach and person.”
Sörensen, who started last season as coach of the AHL’s Rockford IceHogs, was promoted to interim Hawks coach after the team fired Luke Richardson on Dec. 5.
“He’s a great fit to help guide our young players,” Blashill said of Sörensen. “He has relationships with a number of guys, which is important because it keeps some continuity on the staff. He’s very smart, very calm and I’ve learned a lot from him over the years in different coaching settings, so he’ll stay on staff.”
Blashill got to know Peca through Buffalo Sabres assistant coach Seth Appert. Blashill has known Appert since the mid-1990s, when both were goalies at Ferris State, and Appert was Blashill’s assistant on the U.S. world championships team in 2017 and ’18.
Peca, a former NHL forward, was an assistant coach under Appert for two seasons with the Rockford Americans (2021-23).
“He had an unbelievable playing career,” Blashill said of Peca. “He won two Selke (Trophies) as (the top defensive) forward in this league — which means you’re an elite, winning hockey player.
“Both from his coaching experience and playing experience, he can really help mold all our players — but particularly our forwards — and help them find their best games as we try to guide them to being the best winners they can be.”
4. How will Blashill handle Connor Bedard?
Let’s dispense with the obligatory company line: There’s more to this job than just coaching Bedard.
But in reality, Bedard’s spiral last fall under Richardson helped seal the coach’s fate.
Blashill didn’t mince words: “Connor’s going to get to another level. … Like other superstars in this league, he has the drive and want to be the very best he can be.
“When you watch him with the puck on his stick, both his ability to shoot pucks and create plays and make passes is really elite — there’s zero doubt about that. I’ve had the opportunity to coach different unique offensive players, and everybody has their strengths.”
Between the Red Wings and Lightning, Blashill has been around some elite players, from Pavel Datsyuk to Nikita Kucherov, and he recognizes that while each employs his own skills, the steps to the next level are similar.
“That means all those winning habits: making sure you’re stopping on pucks, making sure your changes are great, making sure you’re (taking) short shifts,” Blashill said. “All those things lead to the development side of a winner, and then there’s also the development side of finding ways to separate yourself in Connor’s case.
“How can he separate himself with the puck to create a little more space? Because when he has space in the offensive zone, he’s excellent.”
On that point, Bedard entered the offseason saying his main focus would be to increase his speed while fine-tuning other skills.
“All those little ways — whether it’s with your brain, getting a little bit quicker — those things are in place to help him create that type of separation,” Blashill said, “and then also guide him into becoming that winning-type hockey player that we’ll need him to be.”
5. So what is Blashill’s timeline?
Back to the original question: How much longer must the Hawks be stuck in a state of perpetual losing?
They haven’t sniffed the postseason — let alone a championship — since they sneaked into the 2020 playoffs through the post-COVID return-to-play format.
“I’ll never put a timeline on that. I can’t,” Blashill said. “I have no way of knowing how long or how quick.
“I didn’t know when I went to Indy if it would take us multiple years. Honestly I didn’t know if I was going to make it to Christmas. That was my first head coaching job, two of my kids were 1 and 3 and I wasn’t sure what to expect. But we ended up winning a championship, and we won it faster than people thought we would.”
It was a similar story in 2010-11 at Western Michigan, which reached the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 1995-96. And in Grand Rapids, where the Griffins were 2013 Calder Cup champions in Blashill’s first year in the AHL.
“You just don’t know for sure,” he said. “I know what it’s going to take and I know process is the most important piece of that. What I will say is I won’t rush the process for a timeline.”
First things first, and it starts with establishing an identity — though Foligno believes the Hawks finally have one.
“We have now players that are really excited about being here,” he said. “That’s an identity in itself, that’s a starting ground. So now you can build a culture.”
After soaking up Blashill’s opening rah-rah speech, Foligno took away that Blashill “said that word (‘culture’) and ‘accountability’ and all those words a lot.”
“Without that, everything else just falls through, as you’ve seen,” Foligno said. “With the group that we have, the hunger that we have, the guys that know the opportunity is there in front of them … this should make for a really competitive camp and guys that are ready to take the next step and bring our team to the next level.”
