(670 The Score) With every passing day, the Blackhawks look less and less like the dynastic version of the 2010s, as the roster now features a handful of familiar stars surrounded by new and younger pieces in various stages of development.
Many of those whose names adorn our kids' now-too-small jerseys are long gone, and while a few who remain are in some form of decline, others continue to play at close to prime level when healthy. It's a different coach with his own system, which means adjusting our hockey aesthetic to fit these times instead of continuing to view them through the same, long-practiced lens. As yet another offseason continues, the retooling and more draft classes develop, I felt it a good time to let general manager Stan Bowman himself describe how to watch the Blackhawks go about their business and what expectations should be for a group working under coach Jeremy Colliton.
Bowman did so on the Bernstein and McKnight Show on 670 The Score on Tuesday.
DEFENSE: "We want to pressure the puck, get the puck back and get it moving up ice as quickly as we can and spend more time in their end," Bowman said. "That's the essential system that we're trying to play. (Colliton) wants to play a high-pressure game. So what I mean is when we don't have the puck, we want to pressure the other team and get it back as quickly as we can, force them to do things before they're ready to. So if you tend to sit back, you allow them to enter with speed and then you're on your heels trying to defend. So if you do end up in your own zone, we want to try to pressure guys, force them to make plays quickly and then we want the rest of the guys to also -- it can't just be one guy pressuring, it kind of has to be in unison. So if I pressure and they move to another area, then that guy has got to know to pressure."
Easy to understand, then. Deny the offense time and space with pressure, ideally forcing misplays and turnovers. Pressure defenses in all sports are subject to disruption and compromise from opponents willing to take certain risks, so multiple helps and recoveries in a man-to-man-based system have to become second nature. We've seen recent Blackhawks' defenders susceptible to a strong forecheck and asked to win puck battles, so it seems recent additions have been mindful of correcting that issue and at least guaranteeing fewer weaker pairings that sacrifice goal prevention for puck movement.
TRANSITION: "We're very good at the exciting-type goals," Bowman said. "We score a lot of those. We were a great transition team. We scored more goals than most teams in the league like when there was a turnover. We were really good -- I guess you'd call it like a fast-break team. So that's a strength of ours."
And that both looks great on the ice and sounds great to hear, because it means they have some individual skill and speed, but it shifts the focus to a primary area of improvement (outside of their NHL-worst power-play defense of last year that only kept the puck out of the net 72.7 percent of the time).
OFFENSE: "The more you play on the other team's end, the better," Bowman said. "I think we didn't do a great job of that at times. I think what we've got to do a little better job of is when there is possession in the offensive zone for us, we've got all our guys in the zone, (is) kind of the old-fashioned way of getting the puck to the net, getting bodies there and scoring a little bit more of the greasy goals -- rebounds, screens, tips. That's something that we want to be better at. I think if we could change the other side and add to a different style, I think it would make our team tougher to play against."
Improvement there will be a combination of adding size and strength, creative play design and a willingness to move into contested areas. The 'Hawks' 5-on-5 Corsi For percentage -- a single number that measures puck possession -- was underwater at 49.3 last season, and their percentage of high-danger scoring chances ranked just 26th in the league. This is a place where talent, tactics and effort (or lack thereof) can come together.
It's a rebuild on the fly for Bowman, and he's perfectly clear about what he expects it to look like when it's all going as envisioned.
Dan Bernstein is a co-host of 670 The Score's Bernstein & McKnight Show in midday. You can follow him on Twitter @Dan_Bernstein.
