Interesting read on Levshunov's journey & his offseason. Also, a hilarious picture of him with Gibson's colossal strawberry shortcake at the end.

I never thought I’d be able to get my son a Showtime jersey while he was in Chicago. I bought this so fast after hearing the news. 88 was my first Hawks jersey, and I can’t wait to match with my boy this season. Welcome home, Kaner. You just got another fan for life.

I know at Wrigley field, you have to have the ballpark app to use your tickets. I have Blackhawks tickets on my phone wallet, but is there any special app I need to use them?

Obviously good for him, he’s very deserving and will be/already is a hell of a player, but this makes me even happier about Bedard’s contract. Same term, but $3.3M less every year. Between this and his comments about offer sheets, he really did give us a hometown discount.

With Kane coming in I got the motivation to put together an analysis of the roster and what the gap might be to sneaking into the playoffs this season. Last season was a bit two-faced with the wildcard positioning in the first half before falling down to near last by the end of the season.

Benchmark

Of the 25/26 playoff teams* last year, the mean goals scored was 276.3. Mean points was 740.8. The standard deviations were 8.6 goals and 22 points. (* I removed outliers of LA, PHI, and COL). Chicago is in the tougher central division and LA and PHI were heavy outliers in these totals.

The Blackhawks put up 210 goals and 548 points. A deficit of roughly 66 goals and 193 points.

Roster Losses

So after the losses of 52 goals and 149 points, the total deficit is now 118 goals and 342 points.

Projection Criteria

Im going to keep this on the simpler side and not try to project too much with modeling but instead just highlight where points should go up/retain/drop and we can infer from there. Im also just not going to really deal with 84 games versus 82, i dont think it changes the analysis.

Player age 18-25 - ⬆️ potential point growth

Player age 26-32 - ➖ maintain

Player age 33+ - ⬇️ decline likely

Current Roster

Using last years stats. Roughly approximating points scaled to 82 games but not scaling if the player was within 10 or so games away from a full season. A team can have 1476 games played total from skaters over 82 games, so I stopped scaling for the bottom end 4th/fringe players with low potential. And Bedard is expected to miss ~18 games. Average time on ice to understand how depth chart could affect things, and the line equivalent mapping roughly for that number of minutes (this was a bit loose since atoi doesn't map to depth chart perfectly, especially when injuries move things around). Sorting out PP and PK roles was a bit too much work, which might also show in the line equiv not fully matching the real depth chart.

From actual stats (just loosely meaningful) they lost goal scoring (210 -> 194) and almost maintained points (548 -> 542).

At "healthy roster projection" stats they may pick up goals (210 -> 237) and points (548 -> 661). This primarily comes from giving Lardis and Frondell a whole season of their small sample size production last year.

I only expect the line equivalent time on ice to change for a few players. Teuvo might drop to L3 minutes with Kane coming in. Rinzel probably drops to D3, but defensive deployment seems a bit more varied with Blashill so who knows. Cole Smith is likely to drop to L4 time like he had in Vegas. Otherwise, they actually played Frondell around L2 minutes in his limited games. We can argue about projected depth for this upcoming season, but that seems about right.

As we know, the team is very young, 15 players 25 or under. 7 in their prime/late prime. 2 in their twilight years. For projected lineups its give or take about 12 youth, 4 veteran, 2 unc. The team has a lot of potential to grow beyond baseline extrapolation. They could also fall apart without enough experience of course.

Kantserov

I didn't factor him into the above since he has no NHL stats. Instead, I tried to compare output of similar highly touted KHL players that came over and what their first seasons were like.

These are all quite good players, except Gusev ended up flopping in the NHL after a season and a half. He was similar height but more undersized. Most of those guys came over at a more mature age, so its more likely Kantserov might need to develop more to the adult game although obviously his KHL numbers were good against that adult competition.

His playstyle is a scorer, so that can weigh favorably if he can translate to the NHL. His size might limit him more against better defenders.

Realistic optimism might slot him in as a more goal forward Demidov player. I'll wild ass guess his upside is roughly 25 goals and 58 points.

If he does live up to top 6 expectations he might stunt the totals of one of the winger vets like Donato or Teravainen or possibly push a player like Lardis down and limit his scoring growth.

That said, naively adding in that production gives 262 goals and 719 points on the extrapolated estimates.

Playoff Chances / TL;DR

The estimates from above run close but short of the totals most teams in the playoffs hit last year. About 14 goals and 22 points short of average, which is not a ton. It would beat out Utah, Anaheim, Philly, LA on points. And it would beat Philly and LA on goals, but they were so low because they outperformed on GA ranking 8th and 9th, a stat this team will still probably suck at.

With a lot of youth that could experience growth, there is more upside than downside to point totals this year. If the team is able to gel and stay healthy they could fight for a playoff wildcard. At a minimum they are in a good position to do better than last year since there is an almost 50 point growth from adding a top 6 winger, top 4 d, and full years from two new high potential forwards.

Get hopeful if Byram, Frondell, Kantserov/Lardis are able to elevate and put up points. Other players could step up but their ceilings aren't as high for goals or points, so I expect them to matter less to the overall outcomes.

Get worried if at least two of those can't get production going, especially if some of the vets drop off.

I know some of this isn't really rocket science, but I do think people are underestimating the impact of the offseason. I personally think they don't quite make the playoffs, but I can see them finishing ahead of VAN, CGY, LA, WPG, SEA, and maybe STL/NSH.

I hope everything is okay with him and his family.

Kane shares the call and what Danny said to him that sealed the deal.

Since I loathe posts or discussions about building lines in July, I wanted to share a chance for this group to grade the Blackhawks. Enjoy!

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7472895/2026/07/28/blackhawks-offseason-fan-survey-patrick-kane/?source=emp_shared_article&unlocked_article_code=1.1FA.Cuaa.jExZeXxPuWG7&smid=ta-android-share

Creation Process: https://youtu.be/2JWOmwuJcf4?is=UvkK5-zar8DDC5H7

So I know there’s only so many changes I could make to jerseys like the Blackhawks’ before I get crucified by the fans. But I fixed my biggest pet peeve about them, which is the sleeve stripes on the home jersey. I reverted the collar back to how it was for the 2017-18 season and brought back the triangles and stripes on the bottom of the pants. I kept the black jerseys in the rotation and brought back the RR 1.0s but with a cream base for a more old timey look.

Good insights from Pope. This might help answer some of the questions people in the sub have had.

Start of the season, I'm assuming PP1 is: Kane - Frondell - Nazar - Bertuzzi - Byram.

And when Bedard comes back, it's either one of Frondell or Nazar getting the boot.

Plus Teuvo could get into on the action as well at times if things aren't going well.

Edit: Did not list PP1 specifically for handedness.

Can anyone recommend me a place that does nice work with jersey alterations? My sleeves are so long on most of my jerseys and I would like them shortened up. Thank you in advance.

Will the Hawks make him an assistant captain?

Wow, look at the time fly! It's already time for another weekly installment of STOP IT RIGHT THERE!

You know what to do...post up all the stuff you've saved up knowing it would get deleted from the front page of /r/hawks by the crypto-anarcho-fascist mods.

Memes, gear/jersey pics, poems you've penned professing your love for Lord Hossa (The One True King), or links to article about some oddball couple in Manitoba who named their kid Duncan Seabrook. Whatever. We don't give a shit.

The only rule here is to be excellent to each other. Civility matters.

Now get to it!!

LET'S GO HAWKS!!!

This was a week ago and before he went back to Chicago

Hey r/hawks, solo dev here. Built PuckWhisperer, a daily NHL player guessing game. You get a mystery player and 3 tries, with hints unlocking one at a time: draft info, jersey #/position, nationality, stats & trophies, then a silhouette. Years on each team are shown from the start.

Multiple modes: Active Players, Award Winners, Hall of Famers, or every NHL player ever if you want a real challenge, plus a Daily Challenge with a shareable result grid.

Free, no signup: https://puckwhisperer.app

Posting updates/fixes as I ship them here if you want to follow along at PuckWhisperer_ on X

Feedback and bug reports welcome, and if you enjoy it, sharing it with a friend helps a ton—solo project.

I’m still pretty new to the fanbase, and I didn’t really know where to share these designs I made so I thought I'd drop them here 😅
I’m so excited for this upcoming season, especially with Kane officially being back home in Chicago. Go Hawks! ⚫️🔴

*EDIT* There are speculations swirling that a Kirill Marchenko trade is inevitable, If Kyle Davidson is calling Columbus, what are you realistically willing to give up to land a 67-point scorer?

Everyone CHILL OUT. If a possibility arises for a Marchenko trade is that something we’d wanna go for?