Ian Mitchell isn’t physically with the Blackhawks yet.
But when does join them before the 2020-21 season, he’s going to need to compose himself before meeting one of the team’s core members.
“Growing up, I always loved watching Duncan Keith,” Mitchell said Wednesday. “Getting to hopefully meet Duncan soon would be definitely something pretty cool for me. I’m going to probably be a bit starstruck. To have the opportunity to hopefully maybe play with him would be really, really cool.”
Comments like that are reminders that Mitchell is, at heart, just a 21-year-old hockey lover.
He’s also a very talented hockey player, though, and one of the most anticipated prospects to sign with the Hawks in years.
Thanks to him famously rebuffing Stan Bowman’s contract offer last summer, then returning for one more dominant season at the University of Denver, Mitchell’s reputation as the missing piece in the Hawks’ rebuild ballooned into something perhaps bigger than Mitchell himself. Indeed, a large portion of the Hawks’ fan base convinced themselves that Mitchell would never actually sign with the franchise.
But now Mitchell has signed — for real.
He unofficially agreed to in April, then officially put pen to paper last week, inking a three-year entry-level contract that will kick in next season.
He said he chose to start next year and have his contract last until 2023, unlike most other notable rookies who signed deals during the pandemic, with his long-term future with the Hawks in mind.
“[That] gave me another year to prove myself to the organization,” he said. “Hopefully, at the end of that third year, I can earn an even longer contract to stay in Chicago — as opposed to after two years, you see a lot of especially young defensemen getting bridge deals.”
And comments like that are reminders that Mitchell, no matter how starstruck he gets, also lacks no confidence in himself.
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He went so far Wednesday as to compare the group of Adam Boqvist, Nicolas Beaudin and himself to the Hawks’ class of defensemen in the years before the 2010 Stanley Cup breakthrough.
“Maybe it could be not so dissimilar to 2009 or 2008, when they were building for the three Cups,” he said. “They had a lot of young defensemen in the pipeline then with Keith, [Brent] Seabrook...Brian Campbell and guys like that.”
“Adam and Nick and I have become pretty good friends from development camps,” he added later. “Getting to play with those guys next year will be a really good time, and hopefully we can be that ‘next wave’ that Hawks fans have seen before.”
That’s an ambitious model — even the most optimistic would have a difficult time comparing these 2020 Hawks to the 2009 Hawks — but Mitchell is not wrong that his trio with Boqvist and Beaudin is a huge part of the Hawks’ plans moving forward.
Boqvist is coming off a surprisingly responsible rookie regular season and has become a first-pairing mainstay alongside Keith. Beaudin has enjoyed a great summer camp, with Bowman giving him multiple shoutouts Tuesday.
And Mitchell projects as a clear top-four defenseman himself. He worked to improve his one-timers, offensive creativity and vision, defensive gap control and stick use this past winter at Denver; at this point, he’s as well-rounded as prospects come.
He emphasized for seemingly the hundredth time Wednesday that “it wasn’t ever on my mind that I didn’t want to sign with the Blackhawks.” And with that, finally, the contract saga is behind him.
Next up? Joining the team this fall.
“It’s definitely very exciting, something I’ve waited my whole life for,” he said. “At some point I’ll get down to Chicago, I’m not sure quite when. I want to get down a little bit early so I can meet some of the guys.”
Especially Duncan Keith, it seems.
