Who or what has been the biggest surprise for the Black Hawks this year?

There has been a lot of surprises this season early on for the Blackhawks.

I think there's a lot that maybe we thought might happen, but not to the degree that it has.

For me, the biggest one that I think I wasn't expecting is how quickly Jeff Blaschell came in, took control, and the response that this

group had to him coming in and implementing the expectations, the style that he has, and, and just

really just immediately feeling like the bar was raised for how things are going to operate and how he was going to go about his

business as head coach and the team as we talked to a lot of the guys in training camp like

they were overjoyed to talk about how much they liked how Blaschell and his coaching staff

came in and were running practices how they they were communicating, the, you know, intensity, the, you know, just, just the, the style that he has of coaching and laying out very clear expectations.

And I think the group responded really well.

And I, I would like to think that that is part of what has gotten them off to a better than expected start to this season.

I know in the off season we were talking a lot about coaches we thought we would want or that would make, know make the most sense for rebuilding team but

really jeff blaschle came in as one of the more experienced guys that was available on the market or

or open to you know a head coaching opportunity and came into it with the right mindset of i'm not

coming in here to win right away I'm coming in here to

instill winning and I think he's early on gotten off to a really good start with that's I mean

that's obviously a really good pick he has been really good and I mean just think back to our first

few years doing the show through you know Luke Richardson and under sorenson and how many times we hear the leadership on this team say, we need to establish a culture. We need to establish a culture, culture, culture, culture. It got to that point where we heard it so much that we just started rolling our eyes about it. Like, okay. You know what? And I have seen recently, somehow it came back in my feed. Last year's game against Utah where they gave up 95 shot attempts.

And we were yelling about how their culture is that they're bad and that they suck.

In a very short amount of time, Jeff Flash was able to come in here and instill a culture that was in place the first game of the year.

A work ethic and a style of play and a accountability from day one.

So it was almost as if the players really wanted it, but they hadn't really been guided

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