LAS VEGAS — It was always assumed that the Blackhawks would select Artyom Levshunov or Ivan Demidov with the second pick in the 2024 NHL Draft.
Well, it was almost both.
Blackhawks general manager Kyle Davidson pursued Demidov so hard along with Levshunov that he was aggressively working the phones to land a second top-five pick. He almost found a seller too.
A league source said the Blackhawks offered their unprotected 2025 first-round pick and a 2025 second-round pick to the Columbus Blue Jackets for their 2024 No. 4 pick. The source described the deal as “close” to being finalized.
In the end, as Pierre LeBrun of The Athletic reported, the Blue Jackets were too excited about center Cayden Lindstrom and turned down the Blackhawks’ offer. The Blackhawks’ dream of pairing Levshunov with Demidov faded with him.
Lindstrom went to the Blue Jackets and Demidov was later drafted to the Montreal Canadiens.
Blackhawks director of amateur scouting Mike Doneghey is always looking for a market inefficiency in a prospect’s career path, something that could mean untapped potential and a higher ceiling. Think back to 2022, when the Blackhawks drafted 6-foot-8 Finnish center Riku Tohila in the seventh round. Doneghey rather amusingly referred to him as “naive and small-town,” saying he was far behind on the learning curve. Doneghey saw that as a positive because it meant there was a lot more room for Tohila to grow.
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’s still just beginning to realize what he can be.
“It’s the whole Belarusian aspect of it,” Doneghey said. “He showed up at (agent) Dan Milstein’s door and all he had was his suitcase and his clothes. They got him equipment in Green Bay (of the USHL) and everything else. I think he’s way behind the curve, even though he’s a big guy. You look at him and he’s got 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 advanced prospect pool? From the outside, most experts seemed to think so after selecting players like Connor Bedard, Frank Nazar, Oliver Moore, Paul Ludwisnki and Roman Kantserov in the early rounds the past two years.
But the Blackhawks have often disagreed. However, Doneghey hinted Friday that he has been reading what has been written. When asked if Sacha Boisvert’s size, at 6-foot-2, enticed the Blackhawks to draft him at age 18, Doneghey responded with a smile: “That’s what you say.”
Doneghey continued: “He’s a big body in the middle who moves very well up the ice and has a good scoring touch. It can play a closing role. He’s in a power play in Muskegon. I’m sure it will be in North Dakota at some point. He just has a good overall skills package in a variety of roles.”
The Blackhawks, of course, have had some centers come through North Dakota in the past. Troy Murray and Jonathan Toews are the most notable.
“To be honest, I didn’t think about that,” Davidson said when asked if Boisvert was a great center like Toews. “It’s funny. No, we weren’t trying to recreate Jonathan Toews. We’re not going to put that on him.
“But I also want to thank North Dakota alumnus Troy Murray. He asked me and Norm Maciver if we needed help before the draft, and I joked with him and texted him that we wouldn’t accept any player who went to North Dakota, and lo and behold, we accepted someone who goes to North Dakota . Maybe Troy influenced things there a little bit. But no, it’s a great road, North Dakota is a great program and obviously Jonathan experienced a ton of success coming out of there. And if Sacha can bottle a fraction of that, we would be very excited.”
The Blackhawks certainly added more forwards in the draft. After Boisvert, Marek Vanacker (27th) is 1.83m, John Mustard (67th) is 1.83m, AJ Spellacy (72nd) is 1.90m, Jack Pridham (92nd) He is 1.83 m and Joel Svensson (138th) is 1.83 m.
But more than size, The Athletic’s Scott Wheeler immediately noticed the speed the Blackhawks had drafted. Wheeler described Mustard, Spellacy and Pridham as arguably the fastest players in the entire draft. When you add that to Nazar, Moore and Ludwinski, that’s a lot of speed.
Spallation approved.
“I think speed kills,” Spellacy said. “So if you have speed as a team, it’s going to 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 remains the face of the Blackhawks. The team even had him announce the selection of Levshunov, which is particularly amusing considering Levshunov is just 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 always be a star and the face of the franchise and likely one of the faces of the league. But starting at the end of this weekend, the league schedule shifts to the following year. So he won’t be a rookie. He won’t be visiting every NHL city for the first time, with all the added attention that entails. He’ll simply be another high-profile NHL veteran.
In other words, there will be a little less hype around him wherever he goes, which will be good for someone who has probably appeared in the media more and participated in more events than any player in the league.
“Yeah, it’s (good) for sure,” he said after winning the Calder Trophy, capping that 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 group. I don’t want every time I score a goal or whatever (to be) something important because I’m the youngest kid or whatever. Just leave that behind and move forward and learn. “I feel like I learned a lot last year, so I hope I can apply that 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 selected Waterloo’s Mustard in the third round on Saturday, making it seven total USHL picks in Davidson’s three drafts. Levshunov also played one year in the USHL in Green Bay before going to Michigan State.
On top of that, Macklin Celebrini played one year with the USHL’s Chicago Steel, and Steel forward Michael Hage finished 21st with the Canadiens.
“It’s a great path for players,” Davidson said. “It’s also kind of unique. We took a Canadian from Quebec who went to the USHL, and then a Belarusian who went to the USHL. So I would say they’re non-traditional paths. It’s a traditional path for college, but not for people from Quebec or Belarus.
“But it’s a great league. I think it’s improved a lot 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 on to Major Junior or turn pro outside of 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 the entire league that really good players are coming out of it. So that wasn’t the reason we picked those players. We have to like the players first than the league, but it is a great league.”
The sweetest words in hockey parlance might be “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 crunch between the draft and the start of free agency on July 1 and the mass exodus of all Canadians to their lake cabins on July 2. Sphere even prepared a “trade horn” and a flashy graphic for when a trade was made.
But the only changes in the first round involved numbers, not names. Davidson had an interesting theory about why: There’s just no time. With only a few minutes between picks, it’s difficult to navigate the labyrinthine world of NHL contracts and the salary cap.
“My hunch is that it doesn’t seem like a long time,” he said. “Especially with players that (have) no-trade clauses, the extra steps you probably have to take with the (NHL) Central Registry. It’s such a fast pace that even just putting a number on a piece of paper and writing it down, it feels like you’re in a rush.”
Not that that stopped Davidson from pulling off those pick swaps. Davidson packaged up his two remaining second-round picks to send to Carolina and move up to No. 27, allowing him to select Vanacker. In the 2022 draft, Davidson went from zero picks to three first-round picks via trades (two of them involving marquee players like Alex DeBrincat and Kirby Dach). The Blackhawks have made a whopping eight first-round picks in Davidson’s three drafts. That’s the most for any team in a three-draft span since Montreal had 10 from 1974-76. In just two years, Davidson dramatically replenished the pipeline of high-end prospects.
That’s one reason Davidson has been stockpiling second- and third-round picks in trade deadline deals every year.
“It never ceases to amaze me,” Doneghey said. “We started 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 that ability to make packages and get what we want.”
Fortunately, excitement ramped up considerably on the second day of this year’s draft, when the Mikhail Sergachev and Kevin Hayes trades occurred less than half an hour into the second round, kicking off a flurry of deals across the league .
(Photo by Artyom Levshunov and Ivan Demidov: Ethan Miller//Keynote USA/Getty Images)
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