Patrick Williams, TheAHL.com Features Writer
The Chicago Blackhawks won three Stanley Cup championships last decade, but they have since been mired in years of setbacks. Connor Bedard, the first overall draft pick in 2023, has given the Blackhawks a foundation to build on, but it takes more than just top picks to build a championship club.
It’s a strong supporting cast that steers a team from regular-season success to an annual Stanley Cup contender, and that’s where the Rockford IceHogs come in.
Going the AHL development route has worked for Chicago before. Their Stanley Cup teams of 2010, 2013 and 2015 were built heavily from within, as players like Duncan Keith, Corey Crawford, Troy Brouwer, Niklas Hjalmarsson, Dustin Byfuglien, Colin Fraser and Kris Versteeg came out of the Blackhawks’ AHL system.
Now a similar building plan is in place as management takes on another long-term project. Scouting and drafting well are the first steps. Then comes development, where all of that talent gets refined. And that is where Rockford matters.
Much of Chicago’s young core – including Frank Nazar, Colton Dach, Alex Vlasic, Wyatt Kaiser, Louis Crevier and Arvid Soderblom – have already come through Rockford. Meanwhile, the IceHogs are being led by the next wave in winning four of their first five games this season.
Forward Oliver Moore, taken 19th overall in the 2023 draft, is out of the University of Minnesota and has four goals and six points through his first five AHL games. Nick Lardis, another 20-year-old rookie, just won the Howies Hockey Tape/AHL Player of the Week award after posting seven points in three games last weekend; he put up 71 goals in the Ontario Hockey League in 2024-25. Martin Misiak had a pair of 23-goal seasons for the OHL’s Erie Otters before moving on to Rockford this fall. Forwards Gavin Hayes and Samuel Savoie are a pair of third-round selections trying to find their way as pros.
Defensively, there is 2021 first-round pick Nolan Allan, who played 43 NHL games a year ago, along with 2002 seventh-overall pick Kevin Korchinski. Rookie Taige Harding is coming off four years at Providence College, and Ethan Del Mastro is on the verge of breaking through to the NHL.
Goaltending prospect Drew Commesso’s third pro season is underway, and he is joined by Stanislav Berezhnoy, a 22-year-old free agent signing out of Russia who is off to a hot start with Rockford; time may show that there is something there to provide further internal competition for the Hawks organization.
Not everything goes to plan with this process, of course. Chicago announced this week that a knee injury means that second-year Rockford forward Paul Ludwinski’s season is over after just three games.
There will be ups and downs in any development plan. Brought in to manage it all is Jared Nightingale, Rockford’s new head coach. Nightingale, a former Rockford assistant and long-time AHL defenseman, came back to the IceHogs to considerable optimism. In his first season as head coach and director of hockey operations for the ECHL’s South Carolina Stingrays, he set franchise records with 52 wins and 109 points and won ECHL coach of the year honors.
The IceHogs’ 4-1-0-0 start includes three overtime wins – one more than they had all of last season. They dropped a 6-5 decision to Chicago on Sunday, but have allowed just seven goals in their four victories. The team is in Colorado for a two-game set with the Eagles this weekend before returning to Rosemont to face the Wolves again on Tuesday morning.
Last Sunday’s loss showed both the talent and the inexperience that the IceHogs have. They fell behind 3-0 in the opening 6:40 of regulation before pushing back to build two separate leads, only to lose in the end.
“Proud of the guys, how we responded and kind of slowly seeing the makeup of our team and our identity,” Nightingale said this week.
“Lots to like, lots to work on still, but it was definitely a positive step.”