a $136 million, eight-year contract<\/a> with Minnesota that was announced on Tuesday. The 28-year-old Kaprizov could have hit free agency after this season, but the talented forward stayed with the Wild for a record-setting deal.<\/p>\n\u201cYou saw it this summer,\u201d Columbus general manager Don Waddell said. \u201cSummers before you\u2019d always have seven, eight, nine teams that had to move money to get under the cap. You didn\u2019t see that this summer. … I think going forward you\u2019re going to see less free agency. You\u2019re going to see teams locking up their own players if they can.\u201d<\/p>\n
A diminished level of free agency puts the NHL’s non-playoff teams in the same boat, facing even more pressure to grow their own stars.<\/p>\n
\u201cUltimately, for teams in our situation, I think you need those young players coming in to build that core,” Detroit general manager Steve Yzerman said.<\/p>\n
Developing those young players goes beyond the organization, stretching to its draft picks on college, junior and international club teams. Anton Frondell, an 18-year-old forward who was selected by Chicago with the No. 2 overall pick in this year’s draft, is staying in Sweden this season, and Vaclav Nestrasil, another first-rounder for the Blackhawks, is playing for the University of Massachusetts.<\/p>\n
When it comes to their prospects in other programs, NHL teams stay in close contact with their players and the coaching staffs on their teams. It doesn’t sound as if Davidson and the Blackhawks have any plans to alter their approach even with their development focus.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe let the player, we\u2019re an input into their decision-making process, and then we let them go,\u201d Davidson said. \u201cAnd then once they\u2019re in an environment, in a program, we try and work with and alongside the coaching staff, because what we don\u2019t want is our player to be put in the crosshairs or at an intersection of our direction and the coaching staff direction with where they\u2019re at, and then the player has just got a million things in their head.”<\/p>\n
Technology has become a major part of player development across the NHL. The Blackhawks use an internal app to share video, tips and other information with their current players and the prospects in their system. Davidson described the Blackhawks as \u201cactively investigating\u201d how it can use artificial intelligence within the organization.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re working on that,” Waddell said. “We\u2019ve actually brought it in this year to our prospects and add some AI tests and so forth to find out. But I don\u2019t think it\u2019s any secret. Other teams are doing it, too. But I think with AI coming and with your analytics department … the two could be tied together where it may help in certain areas.”<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP Hockey Writers John Wawrow and Larry Lage contributed to this report.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP NHL: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/nhl<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CHICAGO — When it comes to his plans for the Chicago Blackhawks, general manager Kyle Davidson is focused…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":217401,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5115],"tags":[35834,301,521,4087,37,96,5263,4013,5,4,292,43,2583],"class_list":{"0":"post-217400","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago-blackhawks","8":"tag-35834","9":"tag-article","10":"tag-blackhawks","11":"tag-business","12":"tag-chicago","13":"tag-chicago-blackhawks","14":"tag-chicagoblackhawks","15":"tag-compensation-in-sports","16":"tag-hockey","17":"tag-nhl","18":"tag-nhl-hockey","19":"tag-sports","20":"tag-sports-transactions"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/115295736720403019","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217400"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217400\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/217401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}