General manager Mike Smith and coach Brian Sutter are taking a long, hard look at the Blackhawks’ defensemen.
“If there’s one area I’ve been a little disappointed in overall it’s the play of our defensemen,” Smith said Monday.
For Sutter, the biggest letdown has been the performance of Jaroslav Spacek, considered by many to be the Hawks’ best defenseman last season after being acquired in the Nov. 6 trade that sent Anders Eriksson to Florida.
“Spacek has got to pick it up,” said Sutter, who is trying to improve the most porous defense in the NHL’s Western Conference. “I found it interesting when I came here that everyone had him penciled in as a top-three or top-four defenseman. He has to establish that. If you’re a top-four defenseman, there has got to be a sense of urgency.”
Sutter considers Jon Klemm, Alexander Karpovtsev and Boris Mironov to be his top three defensemen. He praised Steve Poapst for having “a very steady training camp,” and he likes the mobility and puck-moving ability displayed by 25-year-old Nolan Baumgartner, who has played in only 26 NHL games since making his debut with Washington in 1995-96.
According to Sutter, “Trent Yawney [coach of the Hawks’ farm team in Norfolk, Va.] said, `Nolan can do a lot of things pretty darn well,’ and that’s what we’re looking for.”
Two defensemen–Steve McCarthy, the Hawks’ first-round pick in the 1999 draft who showed signs of potential stardom in his 44 games last season, and veteran Kevin Dean, who had a disappointing season–have received medical clearance to play in the final three exhibition games. McCarthy was sidelined because of complications from an ankle injury followed by strep throat, while Dean was recovering from a procedure to correct an irregular heartbeat.
The other defensemen trying to earn jobs are holdovers Jamie Allison and Chris McAlpine and Vladimir Chebaturkin, signed as a free agent after dividing last season between St. Louis and the Blues’ former American Hockey League farm team in Worcester, Mass.
Norfolk-bound: Two wingers with high profiles were among eight players sent to Norfolk on Monday. They are Ty Jones, a first-round choice in the 1997 draft, and veteran Valeri Zelepukin, a free agent signed in the summer of 2000 to a three-year contract paying him $1.2 million yearly.
“Ty was quite good the first four, five days of camp, but then he dropped down a bit,” said Smith. “Valeri is a top-notch quality person; he just didn’t make it.”
