The Chicago Blackhawks are a rebuilding team that are hoping to take a major step forward in the NHL standings this season after years of toiling away in the league's basement. General manager Kyle Davidson is bullish on the young core he has assembled; he took care of a key part of business today by extending forward Oliver Moore to a five year, $21.5 million contract. Moore is one of the youth players that will need to show progression this year if the team is going to get in the postseason mix. Another player they will need to take his game to the next level is fellow 2023 draft pick, Nick Lardis .
In terms of future core Blackhawks players that have received the most hype, there has been plenty of noise centered around 2027 Calder-eligible players Anton Frondell and Roman Kantserov. These are two highly-anticipated rookies that are expected to get more results out of this squad.
Lardis is a guy that has somewhat flown under the radar as a potential X-factor for this group. This is a player who had lit up the junior hockey ranks, amassing 71 goals with the OHL's Brantford Bulldogs in the 2024-2025 campaign. He posted a respectable 10 goals and five assists in 41 games for Chicago last season in his introduction to the NHL after starting the year in the minors with the AHL's Rockford IceHogs.
WGN Radio's Charlie Roumeliotis is optimistic on what type of player Lardis can project into in the NHL. Discussing Lardis' game on the Blackhawks Breakaway Podcast, Roumeliotis had this to say: "I might be in the minority in this but I think his ceiling could be like a Jake Guentzel type player where he's just going to be a pure goal scorer and you put him with linemates that can create, he'll put the puck in the back of the net because he's got a lethal shot and a quick shot not just a hard shot. So I've been really impressed with the camp that Lardis has had."
This is high praise for what Lardis can amount to at this level. Guentzel has made his mark as a dependable scoring threat for his teammates to work with. The likes of Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin developed strong chemistry with him on the Pittsburgh Penguins . Nikita Kucherov , Brandon Hagel and Brayden Point have done the same on his current Tampa Bay Lightning team.
If Lardis can hit that kind of ceiling as well, that would huge for the Blackhawks. Scoring goals has been a problem for this team in recent seasons from players not named Connor Bedard . Chicago will need more options to work with in order to take pressure off Bedard and support him. Lardis could be one of those guys who emerges as a complementary star for this team. The Blackhawks will need him and more young players to prove themselves in their quest to return to playoff contention.
This article was originally published on HEAVY
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