Brent Seabrook is no fool.
He hears the cacophony of criticism, feels the pressure to live up to his lofty contract, knows that his role in the Blackhawks’ defensive unit has become increasingly tenuous.
And when he sees how aggressive and change-laden the Hawks’ offseason was — six players traded away, eight free agents allowed to walk, 12 new signings or acquisitions coming in — he realizes that means he’s sliding closer and closer to the edge of the Blackhawks’ roster.
“I feel like the new guy coming into the convention, [with] a lot of young guys from the draft and a lot of turnover,” Seabrook said. “It puts us all on alert.”
He was not alone. Even Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews, the perceived untradeables, felt the tremors beneath their feet as Stan Bowman’s magic wand churned the Hawks’ composition this summer.
The changes were clearly necessary in order to get any more Cup contention out of this aging veteran group — two consecutive seasons of playoff misses are proof of that — but the upheaval was stressful nonetheless.
“It was half-exciting and half-nerve-wracking, not knowing every day … what’s going to happen,” Toews said. “You never like seeing teammates move on to other teams, especially guys that you have good relationships with, but looking at the guys who are coming in, hearing their reputations and track records as teammates in their locker rooms, and seeing what they bring as players...it’s exciting to look at all the possibilities.”
Toews spoke highly of first-round pick Kirby Dach, whom he watched in the WHL playoffs in spring, and Kane sang top defensive prospect Adam Boqvist’s praises. Kane was in attendance for Boqvist’s jaw-dropping performance at development camp scrimmage a week ago.
Andrew Shaw’s presence among the summer transformations was clearly a popular move among the Hawks’ veterans — no player’s name has been mentioned more lovingly throughout combine weekend — but many of the other newcomers, even the established NHL ones, will be fresh faces in the locker room.
That’s exciting yet unnerving for the veterans tasked with leading that room.
“I kind of like the way the direction the team’s headed,” Kane said. “It seems like, [with] a lot of the players we have this year, there will probably be more defined roles.”
The chef behind the new blend agreed with that assessment.
“We weren’t just going to bring in new players and hope they can maybe fill in a hole,” Bowman said. “We looked at our team and tried to analyze what went wrong, and we set out to fix that.”
Naturally, many of those fixes came on the back end, where Calvin de Haan and Olli Maatta will add more conservative reliability and Boqvist, too, will compete for a job. That puts pressure on Seabrook especially, who also senses odd-men-out Carl Dahlstrom and Slater Koekkoek nipping at his heels.
The 34-year-old rearguard will undoubtedly benefit from a full training camp of work with Jeremy Colliton’s unique system — he admitted he “had a tough time making the switch” last year — but his spot is suddenly far from secure.
“Obviously with the additions we made, that’s going to help, but the guys that were here last year, we’ve got to be that much better,” Seabrook said. “It’s going to be a battle for ice time and positioning, so it’s good to have competition within the group.”
