SAN JOSE, Calif. — The American Hockey League can be a little, well, chaotic. Sure, a handful of players capable of playing in the NHL are on every roster, but the majority of the players are long-shot prospects and long-lost veterans, guys who might one day get a cup of coffee with their parent club but who have essentially maxed out in the second- or third-best league in the world (depending on how you view the KHL). That often leads to some choppy, sloppy hockey. There’s more dumping and chasing, more clutching and grabbing. A lot less razzle-dazzle.
Scrappier players often thrive. Skilled players sometimes suffer.
So maybe it shouldn’t surprise anybody that Artyom Levshunov looked better against the mighty Colorado Avalanche than he might have against, say, the Colorado Eagles. Levshunov’s game just might be better suited to the skill and structure of the NHL than the messiness of the AHL.
“Sometimes it’s harder there than here, true,” Levshunov said. “The players are better here (in the NHL); the level is higher here. So sometimes it’s easier here. It’s weird, but for sure, it’s true. The game is different.”
The Chicago Blackhawks aren’t giving any indication about whether Levshunov is up with the big club as a brief reward for his steady improvement in Rockford or if he’s potentially here to stay. Neither Kyle Davidson nor Anders Sörensen has told Levshunov one way or the other, and Sörensen is playing it coy publicly.
But if Levshunov continues to play as well as he did against Colorado and as competently as he did in Thursday’s 4-2 loss to the San Jose Sharks, it’d be awfully hard to justify banishing him back to Rockford.
“It’s an evaluation process, right?” Sörensen said before the Sharks game. “We’ll see how he does. Good first game. Let’s follow it up now. The consistency is going to be the key here. We saw what we liked the first game, but now let’s see it again.”
📰 ➡︎ https://t.co/NeHi3wNaLV
🔴 Artyom Levshunov made his NHL debut on Monday, registering three shots and two blocks. He’s the eighth Blackhawks rookie to debut this season and the fourth from the 2024 NHL Draft pic.twitter.com/oaze1hVNwG
— Chicago Blackhawks (@NHLBlackhawks) March 13, 2025
Levshunov’s second game wasn’t quite as flawless as his first, but he still was impressive at times. Midway through the first period, after pinching in the offensive zone, he hustled down the ice on the backcheck and stole the puck in the defensive zone. He then proceeded to give it right back with a failed clearing pass. That’s going to happen with a rookie, and frankly, nearly the entire Blackhawks team was on its heels for the entire first period as the lowly Sharks dominated.
Levshunov also got a chance to quarterback the top power-play unit, but his one opportunity in the first period didn’t go well. He passed up a shooting lane and went for a nifty no-look slap-pass one-timer to Teuvo Teräväinen, who didn’t appear ready for it.
But just like in Denver, Levshunov seemed to get more comfortable — and more confident — as the game went on. By the end of the second period, he was whipping the puck around the offensive zone, even hitting the post on a missile of a one-timer from the point late in the second period. He was a little out of sorts during the six-on-five with the goalie pulled, colliding with a teammate behind his own net while trying to set up a breakout, but overall, Sörensen was pleased.
“I thought he did some good things,” Sörensen said. “Just learning consistency and learning to play at this level. They came out hard there, and it was fast, but then I thought he settled in.”
Levshunov, of course, would love nothing more than to stick around. He has gotten his first glimpse of life in the NHL: the five-star hotels, the comfortable private plane, the high-end food options everywhere he looks. Who would want to go back to riding buses after that?
“It is nice, for sure,” Levshunov said, with a big smile on his face. “It’s unreal.”
Levshunov said he was a little taken aback by the speed of the Avalanche in the first period of his debut, but he got more and more comfortable and more and more confident with every shift. By the end of the game, he said it felt like “normal hockey” to him, and sure enough, he looked like a veteran defenseman out there, making smart defensive decisions mixed with bold offensive attacks.
He’s a quiet guy, but he maximizes his words, with a big personality lurking beneath his sotto-voce bon mots. So although he might seem almost unnervingly calm given the magnitude of his first week in the NHL, he’s not taking any of it for granted.
“No, I’m excited,” he said. “I’m just trying to play my game and enjoy the moment. Nothing could be better than being in the NHL.”
If that’s not motivation to play well every night, what is?
“For sure I want to stay here, yeah,” he said. “If I play good every game, I get to stay.”
The language that gets thrown around an NHL rink — from coach to player, player to player, player to referee and, yes, referee to player — is not for the faint of heart. So whatever Connor Bedard said to referee Chris Rooney after a blatant trip went uncalled midway through the third period must have been really bad for him to get hit with a 10-minute misconduct penalty.
Right?
“I’ve heard worse,” Sörensen said.
“I didn’t think it was too crazy,” Bedard said. “But obviously, he’s the ref, so he gets to make that call. So you’ve got to live with it.”
Whatever Bedard said, it must have been under his breath, because there were no wild histrionics, no animated conversation. Regardless, Bedard could only sit and watch for 10 long minutes as his teammates looked for the equalizer, down 3-2. It never came, and Tyler Toffoli scored an empty-netter to seal it.
“Obviously, it’s not too fun (sitting there),” Bedard said. “So I’ve got to be smarter with my words there. Obviously, I’m supposed to be out there in those situations, so it’s frustrating to have to watch.”
NHL officials are never made available to reporters.
It wasn’t quite as momentous as when Bedard lined up against Sidney Crosby for the first faceoff of his NHL career last season, but the opening draw Thursday night was something special, too. Bedard went up against Macklin Celebrini — a pair of North Vancouver kids who went No. 1 overall in back-to-back seasons. Bedard won the faceoff, but Celebrini got the only point and the win. And though the hockey world will debate for years which of the two young stars is better, it’s the friendliest of rivalries between two kids who basically grew up together.
And it’s a rivalry that could last 15 years or more.
“Obviously, that’s the goal — for both of us to be in the league for a while,” Bedard said. “It’s just been fun to watch his growth and get to cheer him on and see his success.”
Celebrini is a minus-26 this season on a bad Sharks team but has drawn praise for his two-way game, which is more developed than Bedard’s was at this point last season. Asked to name something about Celebrini that stands out to him, that’s what Bedard pointed to.
“This is weird to say, but his energy,” Bedard said. “He’s always hounding pucks, and he’s always moving, and he’s just hard to play against. That’s impressive for an offensive player that is so gifted. We can talk about, ‘Oh, his shot, his skills, his IQ.’ It’s all unbelievable. But that’s something people might not notice as much — just how hard he is on pucks and (how) he’s always getting in the way and creating stuff off the puck.”
Frank Nazar was far and away the Blackhawks’ best player against San Jose; he was flying from the get-go. He scored 10 seconds into the second period, flying down the wing and using Mario Ferraro as a screen to beat Alexandar Georgiev. Nazar finished with a game-high 10 shot attempts, six on goal.
guys wake UP ‼️ Frank just scored 😌 pic.twitter.com/8LxQ0QGm0M
— Chicago Blackhawks (@NHLBlackhawks) March 14, 2025
Sörensen saw early that Nazar had the legs moving, and bumped him up to Bedard’s line in the second period.
“It’s definitely nice and good for the confidence, just being able to go out there and know you’re moving well,” Nazar said. “There’s games you’re going to have like that, and there’s games where you might not feel your best. But it’s nice to know that he’s going to recognize that, he’s going to know when you’re moving your feet, when you’re making plays, and reward you for that.”
Tyler Bertuzzi’s goal drought is at 19 games. The highest-paid player on the team (not counting the retired Shea Weber’s dead money) played just 11 minutes, 20 seconds in a fourth-line role. He didn’t have a shot on goal and had just one attempt.
(Photo of Artyom Levshunov: Bob Kupbens / Imagn Images)
