Blackhawks Pipeline Ranked No. 2 By The Athletic

[Chicago Blackhawks]

Blackhawks Pipeline Ranked No. 2 By The Athletic

Corey Pronman at The Athletic has been rolling out his annual preseason rankings of NHL pipelines over the last few days. Today he reached the completion of the list, and he has the Chicago Blackhawks ranked second in the NHL behind only the San Jose Sharks.

Here’s an important distinction with Pronman’s rankings: he includes NHL players like Connor Bedard.

“Player eligibility is determined by age. A player is eligible if he is 22 years old or younger as of Sept. 15, 2025. This encompasses almost every prospect selected between the 2021 and 2025 NHL Drafts. This is done to include a team’s top prospects without aggressively graduating players who have a lot of prime development years ahead of them, even if they are already in the NHL.”

Where my curiosity was piqued with Pronman’s rankings this year comes with the emergence of Frank Nazar. As we’ve talked about over the past couple years, Pronman was not as high on Nazar as some others. He’s admitted over the past months that Nazar has developed into a more effective player at the NHL level than he anticipated; full marks to both Nazar for being a stud and Pronman for acknowledging that reality.

So when I started scrolling through Pronman’s rankings of the under-22 players on the Blackhawks’ books, I was intrigued to see where the “new” Nazar ranked. Pronman now has him fourth, saying in part:

“Nazar’s first pro season went about as well as you could have hoped for. He was excellent in the AHL, being one of the best players in that league in the first half. He was called up to Chicago, where he was solid in the NHL, and then was a critical part of Team USA winning gold at the World Championships. Nazar has a very likable style of play. He’s full of speed and energy. He has a high skill level and creates offense, but does so in a direct, translatable way to the NHL.”

Timothy T. Ludwig-Imagn Images

Blackhawks Top 15​

Here’s how Pronman ranked the top 15 under-22 players in the Blackhawks’ pipeline:

1. Connor Bedard, C
2. Artyom Levshunov, RHD
3. Anton Frondell, C
4. Frank Nazar, C
5. Kevin Korchinski, LHD
6. Sam Rinzel, RHD
7. Sacha Boisvert, C
8. Oliver Moore, C
9. Mason West, C
10. Colton Dach, C
11. Roman Kantserov, RW
12. Nolan Allan, LHD
13. Ryan Greene, C
14. Marek Vanacker, LW
15. Václav Nestrašil, RW

A few immediate reactions that I’m sure aren’t exclusively mine:

• Korchinski ahead of Rinzel is interesting. It appears Rinzel is primed to be a top-pair defenseman with Alex Vlasic this coming season. He showed incredibly well down the stretch last year after leaving Minnesota to join the Blackhawks.

• Staying on the blue line, seeing Allan get a nod in the top 15 and Ethan Del Mastro in the honorable mentions was interesting as well. Maybe it’s because he doesn’t have a contract yet, but there was no mention of Wyatt Kaiser anywhere.

• Nick Lardis being only an honorable mention was a bit of a disappointment — again. It certainly feels like there are a lot of people who have questions about his scoring translating to the professional ranks.

• All six of the Blackhawks’ first-round picks from the last two years make the top 15. Maybe a little recency bias? I’m not sure. A lot more people outside Chicago are touting the upside of Nestrašil since the draft, which I love. I was fascinated that West placed as high on the list as he did while AJ Spellacy was stuck in the Honorable Mention category. Spellacy is the better skater with more hockey experience between the two football players in the pipeline.

• One other name missing from the list that I might be higher on that some is Jack Pridham. He’s staying with Kitchener in the OHL this season instead of joining Boisvert at Boston University. He scored 27 goals in 48 regular-season games with Kitchener last year and followed that with seven goals in 13 postseason contests. I think he has terrific pro size and skating ability and would have him higher than John Mustard right now (I did in my post-draft prospect rankings).

If you’d like to compare them, Steven Ellis at Daily Faceoff previously had the Blackhawks at No. 3 in his pipeline rankings. Ellis does not include graduated players like Bedard.

The 2025-26 NHL Pipeline Rankings roll out this week, taking a look at the best U23 players in each NHL organization https://t.co/4BOrP4MnWz

— Corey Pronman (@coreypronman) August 25, 2025

Source: https://www.bleachernation.com/blac...ckhawks-pipeline-ranked-no-2-by-the-athletic/