Earlier this week, the fine folks at
JFresh shared this graphic of the slowest players in the NHL. You’ll notice
Pat Maroon took the championship belt and went home with it, but the Blackhawks are not-so-impressively represented on these three lists:
I know there are going to be plenty of people who want to sprint to the top of their local hill and scream at the clouds because
Connor Bedard is on the list for lowest top sustained speed, but the guys right after him in that top 25 — Cole Perfetti and Anze Kopitar — have fans who aren’t complaining about their ability to produce. So I’m not going to give much oxygen to that list.
What I am concerned about is that the Blackhawks’ two big free agent signings from last summer — the only two external free agents who have received contracts longer than two years since Kyle Davidson took over as GM — appear on all three lists.
Tyler Bertuzzi and
Teuvo Teräväinen approach the game differently, but they rank similarly when it comes to speek on the ice.
Frankly, I was surprised to see Teräväinen on all three. And I’m not necessarily worried about the perceived lack of speed in his game being an issue after he assisted on 43 of the Blackhawks’ 224 team goals this season (19 percent of the total). He started the season as a third-line player and that’s probably where he fits best on the roster.
My concern remains with Bertuzzi, and how he fits beyond his first season in Chicago.
David Kirouac-Imagn Images
When the dust settled for the 2024-25 Blackhawks season, Bertuzzi was tied with Bedard for second on the team with 23 goals. On the surface, that’s not a bad line; that’s the second-best season of Bertuzzi’s career that didn’t involve a trade during the year.
Between Nov. 10 and Dec. 7, Bertuzzi went 12 games without scoring a goal. Between Jan. 20 and March 15, Bertuzzi went another 20 games without a goal. For those scoring at home, that’s 32 games over two stretches in which Bertuzzi didn’t score a goal. Not ideal.
Bertuzzi was brought in to be a top-six forward and his 23 goals would theoretically point to a guy who can play that role. As the Blackhawks improve the talent in the lineup and add more young players, there will be more, better opportunities to score.
But… that’s the problem. The young players who are coming up are
Frank Nazar and
Landon Slaggert and
Oliver Moore and
Ryan Greene (so far). And each of them — and the waves that will follow them to the NHL — are all known for their speed on the ice. According to another graphic from
JFresh (and we’ve discussed this before), Nazar ranked among the league leaders in number of 22+ mph bursts per 60 minutes (1.1).
NHL Edge data tells us Nazar ranked in the 85th percentile in the NHL in total number of speed bursts over 20 mph (146) — and he only appeared in 53 NHL games.
The kids aren’t the only guys on the roster who can fly. While he isn’t one of the Blackhawks’ top prospects, and he didn’t appear among the league leaders in any of the columns shared by JFresh somehow, but
Ilya Mikheyev is one of the faster forwards in the league.
NHL Edge data tells us his top speed (23.18 mph) this past season ranked in the 91st percentile in the NHL and he ranked in the 95th percentile in the league in total number of speed bursts over 20 mph (198).
Slotting
Lukas Reichel into the 2025-26 roster is tough because of the healthy scratches and inconsistent ice time realities he’s faced over the past couple years. But even he ranked in the
95th percentile in the league in total number of speed bursts over 20 mph (198 — the same number as Mikheyev but in only 70 games played).
When we look at how the Blackhawks generated dangerous chances in the final weeks of the regular season, many of them came off the rush because they had sports cars on the ice creating space with their wheels.
Which brings me back to how / where /
if Bertuzzi ultimately fits into the Blackhawks’ lineup in the final three years of his contract.
David Banks-Imagn Images
Let’s roll the tape back to
Oct. 21, when I wrote about the issues I was already seeing with the way the Blackhawks’ 2024-25 roster was constructed. The roster on the ice then was far from the roster on the ice at the end of March and into April; it was older and slower. And the team was struggling to create much offense because it was slow — something I labeled an organizational paradox because the future is being built on young speed.
Going back to the 2023-24 season when he was (mostly) healthy,
Jason Dickinson ranked in the 72nd percentile in the NHL in total number of speed bursts over 20 mph. If we consider newcomer
Joe Veleno a part of the bottom six as well, even he ranked in the 75th percentile in the league in total number of speed bursts over 20 mph (114). So your way-too-early third and fourth line centers are both above average skaters as well.
One figures a fully healthy roster in camp will see Teräväinen slotted back into a bottom-six role. The other notable snail on the JFresh lists,
Nick Foligno, will join him there. Maroon is retired now. Craig Smith got traded away. Their roster spots will be up for grabs with a healthy camp competition for the youngsters — each of whom, again, brings speed to the ice.
The Blackhawks have a lot of cap space to work with this summer and figure to be in the market for someone to help improve their top six. Considering the profile of the youth movement — fast — one has to assume skating will be a factor that weighs heavily in the evaluation of offers.
Back in March, I pondered Bertuzzi’s role on the Blackhawks moving forward with the
focus of that piece being his poor advanced metrics. Considering the speed of the roster more deeply now that the full season is in the books amplifies the fit being a question mark even further.
Looking ahead to the coming season, it’s hard to imagine the Blackhawks will take a guy who tied for second on the team in goal scoring this past season and put him in a bottom-line role, but… where else does Bertuzzi fit?
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