LAS VEGAS — It was always assumed that the Blackhawks would draft either Artyom Levshunov or Ivan Demidov with the second pick in the 2024 NHL Draft.
Well, it was almost both.
Blackhawks general manager Kyle Davidson was so desperate to secure Demidov and Levshunov that he went out of his way to get a second pick in the top five. He almost found a seller.
A league source said the Blackhawks have offered their unprotected 2025 first-round pick and a 2025 second-round pick to the Columbus Blue Jackets in exchange for their 2024 No. 4 pick. The source described the deal as “close” to happening.
Ultimately, as Athleticism Pierre LeBrun reported that the Blue Jackets were too high on center Cayden Lindstrom and declined the Blackhawks’ offer. The Blackhawks’ dream of pairing Levshunov with Demidov vanished with that.
Lindstrom went to the Blue Jackets and Demidov was later selected by the Montreal Canadiens.
Blackhawks director of amateur scouting Mike Doneghey is always looking for market inefficiency in a prospect’s career trajectory, which could mean untapped potential and a higher ceiling. Think back to 2022, when the Blackhawks selected 2.03m Finnish center Riku Tohila in the seventh round. Doneghey rather amusingly called him “naive and from a small town,” saying he was well behind the learning curve. Doneghey saw this as a positive, as it meant there was much more room for Tohila to flourish.
With Levshunov, Doneghey found something similar in a much higher-level prospect, which was very exciting for a scout. As good as Levshunov was at Michigan State, he is just beginning to realize what he can become.
“This is the whole Belarusian aspect of the situation,” Doneghey said. “He showed up at (Officer) Dan Milstein’s door and all he had was his suitcase and his clothes. They bought him the equipment in Green Bay (from the USHL) and everything else. I just think he’s so late, even though he’s a big guy. You see him and he has long arms and long legs. It’s just that he hasn’t trained in North America. Last August he went to Michigan State, so he didn’t even have a college workout like most kids. I just think his potential is high. »
Did the Blackhawks need more size in their forward prospect group? From the outside, most experts seem to think so after drafting players like Connor Bedard, Frank Nazar, Oliver Moore, Paul Ludwisnki and Roman Kantserov in the first rounds over the last two years.
But the Blackhawks have often been at odds. Doneghey suggested Friday that he had read what was written. When asked if Sacha Boisvert’s size, standing at 6-foot-2, attracted the Blackhawks to draft him 18th overall, Doneghey responded with a smile: “That’s what you say, guys.
Doneghey continued: ““He’s a big player in the middle who moves very well on the ice and has a good offensive touch. He can play a defensive role. He is on the power play in Muskegon. I’m sure he will be in North Dakota at some point. He simply has a good skill set in a variety of roles. »
The Blackhawks have of course had a few centers come out of North Dakota in the past. Troy Murray and Jonathan Toews are the most notable.
““I didn’t think about it, to be honest,” Davidson said when asked if Boisvert was a big centre like Toews. “It’s funny. No, we weren’t trying to recreate Jonathan Toews. We wouldn’t hold that against him.”
“But thanks also to North Dakota alumnus Troy Murray. He was asking myself and Norm Maciver if we needed any help before the draft, and I joked to him and said we’re not taking any players that were going to North Dakota, and lo and behold, we’re taking someone who was going to North Dakota. North Dakota. Maybe Troy influenced things a little there. But no, it’s a great path, North Dakota is a great program and obviously Jonathan had a lot of success coming out of there. And so if Sacha could bottle a fraction of that, we would be very excited.
The Blackhawks certainly added some size to the forwards in the draft. After Boisvert, Marek Vanacker (No. 27) is 6-0, John Mustard (No. 67) is 6-1, AJ Spellacy (No. 72) is 6-3, Jack Pridham (No. 92) is 6-1 and Joel Svensson (No. 138) is 6-1.
But more than size, Athleticism Scott Wheeler immediately noticed the speed with which the Blackhawks drafted. Wheeler described Mustard, Spellacy and Pridham as probably the fastest players in the entire draft. When you add that to Nazar, Moore and Ludwinski, that’s a ton of speed.
Spallacy approved.
“I think speed kills,” Spellacy said. “So if you have speed as a team, it will be a lot easier to win games and beat the other team. So I think there’s more to it than just speed, but when you have a lot of speed it’s easy to win games if you have a great team. »
The Blackhawks hope so.
Bedard is still the face of the Blackhawks. The team even had him announce the Levshunov selection, which is especially funny considering Levshunov is only three months younger than Bedard, who turns 19 on July 17. But eventually, the novelty of Bedard will wear off — in a good way. He will still be a star and the face of the franchise and probably one of the faces of the league. But once this weekend is over, the league calendar turns to the next year. So he won’t be a rookie. He won’t be visiting every NHL city for the first time, with all the extra attention that comes with that. He will just be another high-profile NHL veteran.
In other words, there will be a little less hype around him wherever he goes, which will be nice for someone who has probably done more media and more events than any player in the league.
“Yeah, it’s (nice) for sure,” he said after winning the Calder Trophy, capping a crazy first year. “It’s obviously a special year, fulfilling a lifelong dream of playing in the NHL. But then you just want to be with the rest of the pack. I don’t want every time I score a goal or anything (to be) a big deal because I’m the youngest or whatever. You just have to get that behind you and move forward and learn. I feel like I learned a lot from last year, so I hope I can take that into next season.
The Blackhawks selected a USHL player in the first round for the third straight season, with Muskegon’s Boisvert joining Moore and Nazar (the U.S. National Team Development Program team competes in the USHL). They also drafted Waterloo’s Mustard in the third round Saturday, making it seven USHL picks in total in Davidson’s three drafts. Levshunov also played one year in the USHL with Green Bay before heading to Michigan State.
Additionally, Macklin Celebrini played one year with the Chicago Steel of the USHL, and Steel forward Michael Hage was ranked 21st among the Canadiens.
“It’s a great course for the players,” Davidson said. “It’s also a unique journey. We took a Canadian from Quebec who joined the USHL, then a Belarusian who joined the USHL. So, non-traditional paths, I would say. This is a traditional path for universities, but not for people from Quebec or Belarus who could follow this path. »
“But it’s a great league. I think it’s gotten a lot better over the last few years. So I think it’s a great opportunity for young players to develop and prepare for the college ranks, or if they decide to move up to the major-junior level or go pro after leaving the USHL. I think it’s a great path for players and it’s really high-quality junior hockey.”
“We love the league and I think it shows across the league that some really good players are coming out of it. So that’s not why we picked these players. We have to love the players first rather than the league, but it’s a great league.
Perhaps the sweetest words in hockey language are “we have a trade to announce.” It’s one of the things that makes draft weekend so much fun: the sheer chaos of the time between the draft and the start of free agency on July 1 and the mass exodus of everyone Canadians to their lakeside cabins on July 2. The NHL and Sphere even put together a “trade horn” and a stunning graphic for the trades.
But the only first-round trades were for numbers, not names. Davidson had an interesting theory as to why: There’s simply no time. With only minutes between picks, it’s difficult to navigate the labyrinthine world of NHL contracts and the salary cap.
“My gut feeling is it doesn’t seem like a ton of time,” he said. “Especially with players (having) no-trade clauses, the extra steps you probably have to go through with the (NHL) central registry. It’s such a hectic pace out there that even putting the number of picks on a piece of paper and putting them in there feels like an extremely rushed process.”
Not that that stopped Davidson from getting those pick trades. Davidson packed his two remaining second-rounders to send them to Carolina to move up to 27th, allowing him to pick Vanacker. Returning in the 2022 draft, Davidson went from zero picks to three top picks via trades (two of them involved important players like Alex DeBrincat and Kirby Dach). The Blackhawks made eight first-round picks in Davidson’s three drafts. That’s the most for any team in a span of three drafts since Montreal had 10 from 1974 to 1976. In just two years, Davidson has significantly restocked the pipeline with high-end prospects.
It’s one of the reasons Davidson accumulates second- and third-round picks every year in deals made before the trade deadline.
“It never ceases to amaze me,” Doneghey said. “We start the day with none in Montreal and two last year and only two this year, and he finds a way to get me and our staff the players we like, the players we want. He has this ability to package things and go after what we want.
Fortunately, the excitement increased significantly on the second day of this year’s draft, as trades of Mikhail Sergachev and Kevin Hayes took place less than half an hour into the second round, kicking off to a string of deals across the league.
(Photo by Artyom Levshunov and Ivan Demidov: Ethan Miller / Getty Images)