Blackhawks’ Alex Vlasic deserves more love for his strong play
Chicago Blackhawks defenseman Alex Vlasic is now in his third full season in the NHL and has already got off to a strong start for the 2024-25 campaign.
The 23-year-old has tallied seven assists in 13 games this season. During the 2023-24 season, Vlasic racked up 16 points in 76 games and looks well on his way to smashing that career high.
Today on Daily Faceoff LIVE, Frank Seravalli shines some light on Vlasic and why he deserves more love.
Frank Seravalli: Someone who doesn’t get talked about enough, in my opinion, for his play is Alex Vlasic of the Chicago Blackhawks. The Hawks won both games this weekend and picked up four points. They’re 3-1 on this road trip, including wins over the Avs, Kings, even though they had no business beating the Kings, and the Ducks. We did our four nations face-off roster projections the other day. Some people had asked me, why don’t you have Seth Jones as someone on your list of players that you even considered for the Team USA backend? My answer to that would have been this right here. Alex Vlasic is the only guy from the Blackhawks that I think should have been on Team USA’s radar.
Frank Seravalli: I don’t think he’s quite gotten to that level yet, but look at this weekend, 52 minutes and 21 seconds of ice time. Vlasic has been really good for the Hawks, picking up two points in their two wins. So, I would argue that this Hawks team, to start, if you really dive into the numbers, they were 3-7-1 going into the weekend, especially coming off of that loss. People were saying, the same old Hawks team as last year and I don’t think that’s the case. I think this Hawks team has vastly improved, just has actually just been a little bit unlucky to start the year. The only teams with a worse expected goals versus actual goals differential so far this season heading into the weekend, was a list of four teams that included the Oilers and the Preds, who we view as sort of drastically underachieving so far. The Hawks are in that same kind of category based on what they’ve been able to generate but not finish on, and I think they’re probably in store for some more luck swinging the opposite way.