Yesterday at their World Junior Summer Showcase, USA Hockey split their list of invited players in half and played against themselves. It was a great test for all of the players at the camp. For the Blackhawks’ prospects, Gavin Hayes was left alone on the White Team with Frank Nazar, Oliver Moore and Sam Rinzel skating f𝔉or the☂ Blue Team. On the , Nazar was listed at the top-line center and Moore was the third-line center with Rinzel on the third defensive pair; Hayes was on the third line for the white team.
Let’s get to some highlights! How about Moore getting shot out of a cannon and scoring a goal?!?
Hayes didn’t score, but his hard work set up a goal here for the White Team.
The tweets below are a fun 2-for-1. After a 5-point game, Nazar had a nice assist on the goal in the bottom tweet. In the top tweet, Cole Eiserman — who’s one of the top prospects in the 2024 NHL Draft — scores a dirty goal.
Let’s stay ridiculously excited about the future of the Blackhawks, shall we? NHL Network is running through their organizational rankings and have the Hawks at No. 4 in the league. The video below talking about how good Kevin Korchinski could be is a good watch. As a reminder: the Blackhawks got Korchinski (and Paul Ludwinski for that matter) in the trade that sent Alex DeBrincat to the Ottawa Senators for one season.
In “Man, That’s Subtle” news, the Edmonton Oilers named Jeff Jackson their new CEO of Hockey Operations. No, not Jeff Jackson the head coach at Notre Dame. The now-former agent Jeff Jackson. Why is this not-so-subtle? Jackson’s top client as an agent: Connor McDavid. He also represented DeBrincat, Quintin Byfield, Connor Brown and others. With three years left on McDavid’s contract, apparently when his agent thought he could do it better than the guys running his elite client’s team strongly enough that he’s now going to actually try his hand at making the Oilers a championship-caliber team.
Remember when the Mets hired Jacob DeGrom’s agent as their general manager with a couple years left on his contract? And how did that work out? We’ll see how Jackson performs, but yeah… this is a big leap for the Oilers.
Yesterday The Athletic published a piece titled “” If you’re like me, the assumption was that the rebuilding Blackhawks would be ignored unless “winning the draft lottery” somehow became a “savvy” move. Well, the lottery played into a mention for the Blackhawks, but that wasn’t where writer Allan Mitchell saw value for Chicago. The No. 2 move on the list is the Blackhawks adding Taylor Hall and Nick Foligno. Here’s what Mitchell wrote about Hall:
If healthy, the ‘Hawks ♋couldn’t have hand-picked a better offensive-minded winger for Bedard. The combination should be formidable.
That’s in line with what I wrote about the Hall move when it went down. Hall is an ideal complimentary veteran to help Connor Bedard enter the NHL. And Foligno is a respected leader who will be an upgrade to the Hawks’ bottom-six.
Finally, have you watched the Cubs the last two nights? Well, you should have! They’re scoring more than the Bears did last year against a Reds team they’re theoretically chasing in the Central Division. They’ve got chemistry and swagger and I ABSOLUTELY LOVE IT. Go get it boys!
