Alex Vlasic eager to speak playoffs into existence for Blackhawks: ‘It’s a matter of time’

The day after last season ended, defenseman Alex Vlasic declared ‘‘playoffs are the expectation’’ for the Blackhawks in 2026-27.

Now that the season — or at least training camp — is approaching, he’s not backing down from that prediction.

‘‘It’s a season where we’re trying to make the playoffs,’’ Vlasic said last week, multitasking with a phone call while trying to keep his Bernedoodle puppy out of trouble.

‘‘As soon as training camp starts, that’s what our goal is. The sooner we establish that goal as a team, the more realistic it can be.’’

By directly vocalizing that goal, the Hawks might be able to speak it into existence. That’s why Vlasic, 25, isn’t beating around the bush, with clichés such as ‘‘playing meaningful games into April.’’ He’s saying playoffs, playoffs, playoffs.

‘‘If you’re scared to use that word, it isn’t a good thing,’’ Vlasic said. ‘‘You want to be confident as a team. Up until halfway through the season last year, we were in a really good spot of potentially making the playoffs, and I think we’re a better team this year and going to take steps forward.

‘‘It’s a matter of time for us. You have to have that confidence level going in, knowing we’re a team that belongs there, and that will carry over to play throughout the season.’’

No analytical model or betting line agrees with him. For example, FanDuel currently gives the Hawks the third-worst odds to make the playoffs in the Western Conference, ahead of only the Canucks and Flames.

Then again, it’s rare for models and lines to project young teams to take major steps forward until they actually do so. Preseason projections generally follow the status quo.

Indeed, the eight Western Conference teams with the highest playoff odds on FanDuel are the eight playoff teams from last season. Yet it’s inevitable that every season will bring about big surprises (such as the Ducks last season) and big disappointments (such as the Jets last season).

Vlasic thinks most of the Hawks’ improvement will be driven by their young core maturing and developing. More Hawks — including Wyatt Kaiser, Artyom Levshunov, Frank Nazar and Oliver Moore — have spent some or all of the offseason in Chicago than in years past, allowing Vlasic to observe their progress firsthand.

But the offseason additions of Bowen Byram from the Sabres and Patrick Kane as a free agent (plus Roman Kantserov) should help, too. Vlasic, coincidentally, enjoyed firsthand views of how those moves went down.

It began when Vlasic was texting on June 23 with defenseman Louis Crevier, who ended up being the one player on the team the Hawks relinquished in the blockbuster deal for Byram. Key context: Crevier was on vacation in Italy at the time.

‘‘He was sending me stuff about the trade, and I was like, ‘No way,’ ’’ Vlasic said. ‘‘All of a sudden, I see, ‘Louis Crevier included.’ I texted him, ‘Dude, I’m so sad.’

‘‘He was like, ‘Oh, why? Did somebody on the team get traded?’ I said, ‘Are you joking?’ He was like, ‘No, what do you mean?’ I was like, ‘Check Twitter.’ ’’

Vlasic and Crevier laugh about it now. For Crevier, one silver lining is that Buffalo is closer to his hometown, Quebec City.

‘‘I kind of felt bad that I broke the news to him,’’ Vlasic said. ‘‘But I guess since he was in Italy, he didn’t have cell service properly, so he wasn’t getting texts from his agent. I was his agent in that scenario.’’

On the other hand, Vlasic is excited to get to know Byram, who’s eight days younger than he is and was part of the same 2019 NHL Draft class yet has already experienced winning a Stanley Cup (with the 2022 Avalanche).

There’s a decent chance they will become defensive partners, even though they both play left-handed.

‘‘I’ve never played the right side, but knowing he played the right side last year in Buffalo for the majority of the year with [Owen] Power, it’s definitely a possibility,’’ Vlasic said. ‘‘He’s such a good skater, so mobile with the puck and creative offensively. I’d like to think I would complement him well — and he’d complement me, as well.’’

After the fallout of the Byram trade, Vlasic began seeing more rumors on social media about Kane, whom he occasionally was skating with at Blackhawks Ice Center.

‘‘I brought it up to him once . . . but I just figured it wasn’t really true, and he just laughed and shrugged it off,’’ Vlasic said. ‘‘One day, I showed up at the rink — we have NHL Network on the TVs in the gym — and I saw, ‘Breaking news: Patrick Kane signs with the Blackhawks.’ ’’

Vlasic and Kane shared a chuckle afterward about his coyness, although Vlasic still finds it ‘‘outrageous’’ that he’ll get to play with a icon who loomed larger than life during his childhood in Wilmette.

But Vlasic and his generation of Hawks will need to cast aside some of that reverence once camp begins in mid-September.

‘‘Normally, you look at a guy like Kane and you don’t want to do anything on your own; you want to let him decide how things are done,’’ Vlasic said. ‘‘But I think the younger group that we have is old enough now that we’re confident in how to lead a team and how we want our team to look.

‘‘He’s somebody who can help us get to where we’re trying to go. Obviously, we’re going to respect him. He’s done it all, so there’s so much we have to listen to him about and hear him out on. It’ll be a good combination for us to work with him and figure out what we need to be doing differently.’’

For Vlasic personally, one area where he can do things differently is at the offensive blue line. Much of his summer training with skills coach Brian Keane has centered on his decision-making at the point.

Vlasic and Levshunov have challenged themselves to ‘‘take charge’’ when they have the puck, to ‘‘try to solve the problem yourself before deferring to other people’’ by ‘‘trying to beat a guy with skating and then make a decision off of that,’’ Vlasic said.

Keane has also worked on increasing the power behind Vlasic’s slap shot — he’s regularly exceeding 100 mph on the radar gun — and improving how quickly Vlasic releases other types of shots when there’s less time and space.

‘‘Deception is another thing we’ve been working on,’’ Vlasic said. ‘‘Threatening what’s already covered. Making the defender panic. When you have the puck, making them think there’s an option that you’re looking at, even though there might not be.’’