Defenseman was quickly recalled from Springfield following injuries to Mailloux, Tucker; could make NHL debut in season=opener on Friday
MARYLAND HEIGHTS, Mo. -- Adam Jiricek took the news as well as could be under the circumstances.
Of course, the first-round pick in the 2024 NHL Draft by the St. Louis Blues was disappointed when told he was being assigned to Springfield of the American Hockey League following a 1-0 preseason win over the Chicago Blackhawks last Thursday, but the defenseman understood.
“After the interview I had after (Thursday's preseason game), I got the call to go up and speak to the management in 10 minutes and they told me, and you have to accept it,” Jiricek said. “I did my best, but it didn't happen. So I went down and I was ready to work there and wait for my chance again and it came pretty quick. I'm happy for that and very excited.”
The 20-year-old didn’t have to wait long.
He barely got settled in Springfield, where the right shot D-man was to get tons of playing time and a plethora of minutes.
“I got there Friday night,” Jiricek said. “I was there Saturday, just like morning skate, and on Sunday I went with (Juraj) Pekarcik to move their stuff from storage to the house and I was about to buy my bed and furniture. But I got the call that I'm going up, so we turned around and I didn't buy anything. I went to pack my stuff and I put my hockey bag in the moving truck and he just drive me in this truck to the airport and they went to move into the house.
“If (the Blues) would have called me an hour later, I would have bought the bed and moved everything. I was lucky I got the call before and didn't buy anything. I just used the truck to move my stuff to the airport and he dropped me there and he went to his new house there. Juraj Pekarcik and Jakub Stancl, they're going to live together and I was supposed to live with them. But I went with Pekarcik, so he dropped me off there, and I appreciate that he did that for me. Change of plans pretty quick.”
“I left Sunday at 5 p.m. and I got here (in St. Louis) like at 9. I spent the day at the airport with one flight connecting. It was pretty quick.”
Jiricek had such a good training camp, even Blues coach Jim Montgomery lauded his play after last Thursday’s preseason win. But at that time, the Blues had one setback to deal with, Tyler Tucker’s right knee injury, and felt they had the seventh defenseman covered with 32-year-old Calle Rosen in the fold.
But when Logan Mailloux injured his right hand in a fight Saturday during a 3-2 preseason loss in Chicago, that the Blues confirmed on Monday that will sideline him for at least eight weeks, things changed drastically, and Jiricek has been summoned to go into the fire.
“I feel like I didn't realize everything right away because it was so fast and I couldn't process all the thinking,” Jiricek said. “It's hard to see what is happening. I just get there, I was there one night, and I'm going back. It was pretty quick and I don't have time to think about it, so I'm just excited. I'm moving my thinking to play here.”
Montgomery called it, “Very deserving. I believe mentally, he thinks he shouldn’t have been sent down, but you like that, that’s what you want.”
Now the question becomes: what do the Blues do with Jiricek?
Well, they didn’t bring him up to the NHL to sit, so you have to assume he will play, but will he play alongside Philip Broberg in Mailloux’s place? It’s a 50/50 shot, because Montgomery said he will not make the mistake of playing two young d-men together. That means Jiricek will not play with Theo Lindstein and get either Broberg or Cam Fowler.
“I hope not, but if the game calls for it to make adjustments … for instance, (Broberg) playing with Jiricek, you can think it’s great chemistry right now,” Montgomery said. “In my mind I can think it, but I’m going to look out there and see like there isn’t. Now maybe Fowler goes with Jiricek. But he’s definitely going to play with a veteran. I’m not going to have Jiricek and Lindstein out there together. It’s just not fair to them.”
“We haven’t made complete, finished plans yet. I have no problem sliding him in there (with Broberg), but if he slides in there, they’re not going to play the No. 1 offensive line, they’ll play in the two-hole. The good thing is we have so much depth on our D-core. (Brandon) Carlo and (Colton) Parayko have played in line matchups against top pairings their entire careers, Broberg has, so had 17 (Fowler). We have four D-men that have done that at the NHL at a high level.”
Blues general manager Alex Steen realizes that with Jiricek, this is a long-haul project, but that doesn’t preclude things from happening perhaps sooner than they expected.
“Yeah, we were looking at everything,” Steen said. “With Adam we're in it for the marathon, so we wanted to make sure that we were putting him in the best position to succeed. That's still the goal, (but) obviously things change in the game very quickly. We try to re-adjust and still be able to give him that opportunity to be in positions to succeed consistently. Yeah we feel strongly about Adam. He's had a great camp. I'd say great over his last 18 months, he's taken a lot of steps, so it's an exciting time for him.”
But Montgomery doesn’t to put any expectations on Jiricek … not yet anyway.
“I don’t want to put any labels on him because of the undue pressure, but I think the ceiling is very high and I hope to see it as soon as possible,” Montgomery said. “He has shown the ability to adapt his game and easily make changes that are going to make him harder to play against offensively and defensively. I don’t see any … live with mistakes, yeah I want to live with aggressive mistakes, and the way he thinks, the way he plays the game, he’s going to make mistakes being aggressive, and we can teach him. You’d rather teach a tiger with stripes on already than someone that doesn’t have any stripes and have that mindset.”
It appears, unless the Blues insert Justin Barron, who was claimed off waivers from the Nashville Predators on Sunday, into the opening night lineup, that Jiricek will get his chance to make his NHL debut in the season-opener against the Dallas Stars on Friday, and he will get special teams work right away.
“He’s going to play power play,” Montgomery said. “He’s special offensively, and we’re going to put him in situations to succeed. It’s up to him to grab it and take it.
“The levels that he’s played at so far, he can get away with holding onto pucks and moving pucks, skating with pucks longer. When you’re in the NHL on the power play, the puck should move faster than any player, it always has, and he’s got to learn to learn to get to the middle of the ice and be a little more stationary and let his puck skills and deception with the puck … instead of moving all over the place at the blue line, he should move it and get to the middle and make the power play go from the middle of the ice. That’s something that people have to learn.”
If Jiricek gets to make his debut Friday, he welcomes it with open arms, and after the training camp he had, the confidence should be pretty steady.
“It's exciting,” Jiricek said. “I didn't play in the NHL yet, so it's a dream. It's still a couple of days until the game. I think it's going to hit me like harder when I'm going to see that I'm in the lineup.
“… I was trying to play my best hockey (in camp) and I think I did pretty good. I showed myself and I want to keep building on that and continue what I'm supposed to do. I feel like I can play here and I can make the team better and that's what I'm going to try to do.”
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