In a way, Wednesday night’s loss to the Devils by the Blackhawks was a good thing. There’s no question that Chicago played a rough game, and even captain Nick Foligno admitted that the Blackhawks came out flat, being out-shot significantly after coming home from a long road trip.
While moral victories don’t really exist in hockey, it should be noted that Chicago lost by one in overtime to the team with the best record in the Eastern Conference after leading a large portion of the game. And that’s without Andre Burakovsky, Frank Nazar, or Jason Dickinson, who were all out with injuries or illness. A year ago, that would be the recipe for a blowout loss—so that’s a mark of how far the team has come already. Connor Bedard and Spencer Knight shone once again, carrying much of the load, while Landon Slaggert, freshly called up, added a tip-in goal.
But one young Blackhawk who wasn’t as successful was defenseman Sam Rinzel. We might have seen this coming at the morning skate Wednesday, when he was taking reps as the seventh defenseman (the Blackhawks skated 11 forwards and seven blueliners again), which seemed to be a product of his subpar play recently. He’s a young player, so moving him down the lineup always involves the risk of shaking his confidence, and it seems that’s exactly what happened.
Rinzel skated only 11:29 in the loss, his lowest mark on the year and the lowest among Chicago blueliners by three minutes. He averages well over 18 minutes of ice time, a number that has been dropping since he started the season at 20 minutes in the month of October. And those weren’t effective minutes. At even strength, he was on the ice for two shots for versus six shots against. He recorded a minute of power play time, which was just as bad. He wasn’t “quarterbacking” the power play, instead opting for a reactive, defensive game on that end.
After the game, Blackhawks head coach Jeff Blashill didn’t exactly put Rinzel on blast, but he didn’t shy away from the question about him, either.
“Rinzel has gone through a cycle where he’s given up a lot of chances. Crevier has been a really good defender for us. Going into the game, we were looking at potentially having Vlasic-Crevier vs. Hughes and/or Hischier, and that happened a lot. We have to get Rinz back going.”
- Jeff Blashill
So what’s the plan from here? The coaching staff obviously isn’t thrilled. It seems the most likely eventual course of action could be for Rinzel to be sent to Rockford for a bit of extra time. The team developed bona fide NHLers like Wyatt Kaiser and Alex Vlasic with the IceHogs, and sometimes that can be all it takes to regain a player’s confidence—which it seems like Rinzel needs.
If he is sent down for a stint in Rockford, the Blackhawks have a stockpile of defensive talent they could bring up, like Ethan Del Mastro or Nolan Allan. But if they’re still eyeing the future, I wouldn’t mind seeing Kevin Korchinski brought back to Chicago. He’s been solid in Rockford, with a positive plus-minus and 10 assists in 13 games. He could give the Blackhawks some help on the power play, as he’s a more offensive-minded blueliner than Rinzel.
If the Blackhawks don’t send Rinzel down for a bit, it’ll be interesting to see how they handle him in the lineup. Do they leave him as the seventh defenseman? That didn’t work on Wednesday, but he also hasn’t shown anything to move him up in the lineup. Louis Crevier was solid in his spot on the top pairing, so he can’t move there.
We’re all hoping Rinzel can be the superstar the Blackhawks planned on him being. And, of course, finding footing in the NHL as a defenseman can take time. But if Chicago wants to keep winning games like they’ve been doing, Rinzel could find himself stuck at the bottom of the lineup or sent to Rockford—neither of which would be a huge surprise after Blashill’s comments on Wednesday.
