Holy cow the Bears are terrible! I know that’s like saying “Hey, the sun rose in the east this morning! Whodathunkit?” but their game in Kansas City on Sunday afternoon was as bad as I can remember. The Cubs handled their business to close out their home schedule for the 2023 regular season, so now we sit back and hope they get into the wild card round. But it kinda sorta feels like the Blackhawks are the primary — only? — source of hope for the city’s sports fans between now and… Spring Training? There’s an excitement around the Hawks that is painfully lacking with the other teams, which is wild when you consider where we were emotionally starting last season after a couple big trades and the rumor mill pumping out Kane and Toews rumors daily. So be thankful at least we have hockey, and there is a preseason game THIS WEEK at the United Center. Three more sleeps 💎until the Blackha😼wks play someone else.
The Blackhawks are going to scrimmage on Monday morning at Fifth Third Arena. There will be officials and the whole deal. It isn’t expected to be a full game length scrimmage, but it will be more live action with both practice groups on the ice together skating against each other. Luke Richardson joked last week that he wants the players to go hard but “not put anyone in the fourth row” so we’ll see how physical it gets.
They’ll be split up between the two teams, but I’m interested to see if the forward lines stick with what we’ve seen primarily through camp. That would be (now that Taylor Hall is on the ice):
Taylor Hall — Connor Bedard — Ryan Donato
Andreas Athanasiou — Lukas Reichel — Philipp Kurashev
Tyler Johnson — Cole Guttman — Taylor Raddysh
Nick Foligno — Jason Dickinson — Corey Perry
The first and fourth lines have been with the “first” group during practices with the middle six (in this arrangement) being with the second group. Tyler Johnson was with the first group before Hall returned on Saturday.
The Blackhawks are out here reassuring us that this was going to happen all along. They shared a How It Started -> How It’s Going couple photos of Marian Hossa and Connor Bedard on Instagram this weekend. It looks like Hossa spent a little time around the boys this weekend, which is awesome. What’s wild is… there isn’t a single player on the Blackhawks today who played with Hossa. His final season on the ice was 2016-17 and Connor Murphy was acquired from Arizona in the summer following that season; Murphy is the longest tenured Blackhawk on the roster now.
I thought this was a pretty fun video from the IceHogs over the weekend. How do they put the ice in? Well, here ya go!
I absolutely loved what Hall had to say about Foligno on Saturday. They were traded to Chicago together this summer and both are excited about the opportunity here. The sincerity with which Hall complimented Foligno and talked about how his leadership is legit tells you all you need to know about the guy (if you didn’t know that about him already).
Finally, this one got to me on Sunday, too.
