As the Chicago Blackhawks 2025-26 season nears its end, the focus remains on the future. Again. As the Blackhawks have rebuilt the organization’s pipeline over the past four years, fans have patiently waited (some more than others) for young players to begin matriculating to the NHL where we could see the real proof of concept the front office has been selling. And that started in earnest this season.
The area where the Blackhawks have the most NHL-ready — some might argue almost settled — lineup at this point is on the blue line. Looking ahead to September, there’s a chance the Blackhawks begin training camp with seven homegrown defensemen battling for the six active spots each night. The oldest of those seven defensemen will be Louis Crevier and Alex Vlasic, who will turn 25 on May 4 and June 5, respectively.
With so many young defensemen still learning and developing, I jumped at a chance to speak with Hockey Hall of Famer Chris Pronger earlier this week. Pronger has a new book hitting shelves next week, so the opportunity to chat with him about his career and where he’s headed in the future was enticing.
Blackhawks fans will likely remember Pronger best for getting his world rocked by Dustin Byfuglien in the 2010 Stanley Cup Final — a turning point in a series that, at the point, Pronger was dominating. But slightly older fans will also remember Pronger as the dominant defenseman who played almost 600 games for the St. Louis Blues, where he won both the Hart Trophy and Norris Trophy following a tremendous 1999-2000 season.
Pronger appeared in 1,167 regular season games over his illustrious career. He was a Stanley Cup champion, a member of the NHL’s 100th Anniversary team and one of the most celebrated defenseman of all-time.
I focused our conversation more on development and being a defenseman in the NHL — because Pronger is one of the best to ever do it, and Blackhawks fans are hoping to see that upward trajectory from the defensemen who are establishing themselves in the NHL turn into successful seasons in the near future.
James Guillory-USA TODAY SportsPronger on Learning to Play in the NHL
With Matthew Schaefer setting the world on fire as last summer’s No. 1 overall pick and likely Calder Trophy winner, I asked Pronger about the transition from youthful exuberance to settled NHL player. That’s also something Blackhawks fans are watching in real time with former first-round picks Artyom Levshunov, Sam Rinzel and Kevin Korchinski. Each of them has arrived in the NHL with expectations and hype — and had their share of bumps in the road early in their NHL careers.
“Some guys come out and they look incredible. … And that youthful enthusiasm … sometimes that gets sucked out of you,” Pronger said. “But I think there is a maturation process, a development curve — the ability to understand the league experience against players and understand tendencies and all the rest of that — that takes time. You have to learn the league and you have to learn the nuance of how to play defense in the National Hockey League, because it’s unlike any other league. Obviously, you’re playing against the best players in the world. … Offense is much easier than defense. And so being an offensive defense within a National Hockey League as a young player is going to be much easier than being a defensive, playing defense.
“Learning that nuance is, I think, where you see a lot of players try to learn the NHL game. When you look at a lot of these guys coming into the league in junior, college, what have you, they use their legs. They create opportunities by skating themselves out of trouble. You’re not able to do that in National Hockey League. And so there’s an adjustment period for that. Outside of, again, Matthew Shaffer and a couple players that are elite skaters, you’re not able to do that. So that’s the learning curve of understanding the nuance of the transition game and puck movement, passing, all the rest of that. You have to really level that part of your game up.”
Pronger’s career did not start with the same success that Schaefer’s has, even though he was (infamously for Ottawa fans) the No. 2 overall pick in the 1993 NHL Draft. His struggles led to a fairly early departure from Hartford. He was traded to the Blues straight up for Brendan Shanahan after appearing in only 124 games for the Whalers. When he arrived in St. Louis, his career took off.
I asked Pronger about how that learning curve plays out for a young player who has to adjust to not dominating competition, learning to play against the best players in the world and doing it for an 82-game grind of a regular season.
“You learn to manage your emotions, you learn to be more efficient and manage your energy levels because it is a long grind of a season and the ups and downs and the rollercoaster ride. And I think as you get more comfortable in your career and have a little more experience, you learn to understand that. From a physical maturity standpoint, as your body, you’re from 18, now you’re 21, 22, your body is developing more. You’re becoming a man, you’re getting man strength, all the rest of that.
“You’re getting better, you’re getting stronger, you’re all these things. You’re becoming a more complete player as you learn the NHL systems and styles. I think that’s the nuance for those younger guys as you look at them because the rest of the league is getting a book on you. ‘Oh, he doesn’t like to go to his backend. Oh, he always likes to cut across and go to the right side.’ All these different things that, as you track it, the analytics and data side of it, you start seeing patterns, you start seeing things happen. And I think finding the understanding of that and then trying to not be predictable and not have too much of a tendency to do this or that so that teams can push you into different areas and push you in an uncomfortable places is the nuance of the game.”
If you’ve watched Pronger as an analyst on television, you’ve seen a thoughtful former player who would probably do very well in a front office role (I asked him about that — he didn’t say no). He told me the hardest part for young players in today’s NHL is learning the game and finding better understanding of those nuances with the schedule built the way it is now.
“Well, in today’s game, that’s the hard part because they don’t practice,” he said. “That’s where you work on a lot of these things. That’s where you’re going to be managing and learning and working with the defense coach, working on your craft, trying to hone your craft. And that, to me, is one of probably the biggest factors or downfalls with where the schedule and the lack of practice time. As this league gets younger and you have less and less practice time, how do you develop these young players? How do you teach them. Is it only in the summer when it’s kind of on their own where you’re not able to coach them up as much? That’s the trick. And there’s got to be a lot of self-reliance on watching video and learning tendencies and, oh man, I keep going to my backend.
“It’s certainly a process and it’s something that in this new NHL — again, with how young it is — this lack of practice and this lack of coaching time can be a problem for a lot of these teams that are trying to rebuild and develop these young players into hope stars.”
Jeff Curry-USA TODAY SportsPronger: Mentors are Needed
From a Blackhawks’ fans’ perspective, the youth movement on the back end does raise questions about who’s going to guide the young defensemen through the hard times. When the Blackhawks traded Connor Murphy and Matt Grzelcyk got hurt, the blue line got real young real quick.
I asked Pronger about how important mentors are for young defensemen.
“I’m a firm believer you need mentors around and you need experienced veterans that can help provide guidance,” Pronger said. “The issue with that is who are they going to lean on? Are they going to lean on one another? Well, they don’t know anything. They don’t have the experience to help one another.
“That’s the issue for me is it’s great that you have these young guys and learning on the fly, but who’s helping to steward them and guide them? And who’s going to saddle up next to them when they’re dash six and they had a tough night and their buddy who was minus four and somebody who hasn’t had that experience and been through those and been through the wars and been through the challenges and the scrutiny to walk them through all that. I think I’m a firm believer that you need those people to be there to help teach you. You can learn those life lessons on your own, but at the end of the day, I think you really need that mentorship and that guidance.”
Pronger pointed out that he started his career with Brad McCrimmon in Hartford, who had played with the likes of Nicklas Lidström in Detroit, Gary Suter in Calgary and Ray Bourque in Boston. He jumped into the NHL with confidence, but learned a great deal from McCrimmon — even if he didn’t necessarily realize everything he was taking away from playing with a guy with that much experience.
“While I may have not always been keenly aware of what was going on and keenly aware of the experience and the learnings, the life lessons that were being presented, by osmosis, you slowly pick things up,” he said. “And then when you’re developing and your brain gets to the point where you’re like, ‘Holy shit, there’s something here. I’ve got to start learning. I’ve got to start leaning into. I’ve got to start figuring out what my potential is. Where’s my ceiling?’
“There’s nothing worse than that word potential. How do we live up to it? What are the expectations? And then how do we reach that ceiling and hopefully go beyond that? Then I had Al MacInnis as somebody I could learn underneath and watch how he prepared, how he handled the notoriety and the scrutiny of the fans, how he managed the media, how he prepared for practice and how he trained, and then how he consistently showed up each and every day for the games. And all those little things, the nuance of day after day, the evolution of your game and just leaning into all that over and over again.
“As you start to pay attention more of, ‘Wow, I need to really invest in my career. I need to really invest in myself. I need to invest in constantly evolving and getting better.’ And then your eyes kind of open up and the blinders come off, if you will, so you’re able to see a lot of that stuff.”
Since taking over as general manager, Kyle Davidson has committed the Blackhawks’ path forward to be build thru the draft. And, again, we’re starting to see his players begin to establish themselves in the NHL — which is what’s exciting about the coming summer in Chicago.
Pronger’s comments about development and learning are all things Blackhawks fans should keep in mind as we watch the coming seasons play out. It isn’t immediate, and the learning is never done.
The task for the Blackhawks coaches and front office is to continue helping guide the young group they’ve build on the blue line as they navigate the early stages of their respective NHL careers together. Whether the Blackhawks look to add a veteran presence to the room to help serve as a mentor for the group is something we’ll find out this summer as free agency and trades hit.
Finally, for those Blackhawks fans wondering, here’s how I concluded our conversation:
“I have one last question for you, and I would be doing a disservice to my audience in Chicago if I did not ask if there’s — “
[Laughter] “I don’t have the puck. I don’t have Game Six,” Pronger said. “I have Game Two. I still have Game Two. It’s on my desk.”
Pronger’s memoire, Earned: The True Cost of Greatness from One of Hockey’s Fiercest Competitors, hits shelves next week (April 14).
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