The Blackhawks were the first team to talk with prospect Samu Alalauri this past season in Finland. Then they were the first to talk with him at the NHL Scouting Combine in early June.
Alalauri wasn’t sure if he should read into the pattern. He learned Saturday, while watching the NHL Draft from his lake house in Finland, that, yes, he should have, as the Hawks selected him with their third-round pick.
“I got the call, ‘You’re drafted to Chicago,’ ” Alalauri recalled Monday. “Awesome — that’s a great place. Then was the next call: ‘Are you ready to come here tomorrow?’ ”
The 6-2, 220-pound defenseman, who just turned 18 in May, was indeed among the prospects in attendance on the first day of Hawks development camp Monday, jet lag and all.
He has a long way to go to reach the NHL, of course. Only 52% of third-round picks play a single NHL game, and only 17% play 300 or more. As with most prospects, the odds aren’t in Alalauri’s favor.
If he does make it, though, Hawks fans are likely to enjoy his sense of humor, which was evident Monday, despite English not being his first language. Consider his answer when asked a generic question about which NHL players he models his game after:
“I’m from Finland,” he responded. “I don’t have time for that! It’s 1 a.m. in Finland when the game is coming [on].”
He won’t have the same time-zone problem next season when he jumps over to UMass-Amherst for the first of likely several college seasons in the NCAA. Alalauri didn’t even know U.S. college hockey existed a year ago, but he believes it will be a good fit because he’s also a strong student. Hawks forward prospect Vaclav Nestrasil, a 2025 first-round pick and one of the headliners in camp this week, will mentor Alalauri with the Minutemen.
“[Vaclav] was chirping me a little bit before I came here, but now we’re good buddies,” Alalauri said.
Alalauri first caught the Hawks’ eyes at last year’s Hlinka Gretzky Cup, an international under-18 tournament held every August, Hawks scouting director Mike Doneghey said Saturday. Alalauri and defenseman Juho Piiparinen, the Golden Knights’ pick at 29th overall Friday, have long anchored Finland’s national team for their age group.
“He just kept getting better and better,” Don-eghey said. “He meets our traits. . . . He can skate all day, and he can handle a puck.”
Alalauri, second-round pick Xavier Villeneuve and seventh-round pick Alexander Ivanov together add needed depth to the Hawks’ pool of defensive prospects, which had grown shallow because the Hawks had drafted only one defenseman, Artyom Levshunov, in the first five rounds of the last three drafts.
“[I need to work on] my defending game,” Alalauri said. “I think that’s a little more sloppy. But UMass is great [at emphasizing] defending sound. That’s going to help me a lot. I’ll become a great D-man.”
Seventh-round pick William Sorbrand, a Swedish center, also flew to Chicago on short notice, driving four hours to the Stockholm airport before boarding his flight.
Forward Anton Frondell, the Hawks’ No. 3 overall pick last year, already has reached out to Sorbrand, although they haven’t yet met in person. Sorbrand said, with a starstruck look — that “everybody” in Sweden knows who Frondell is.
“I’m a power forward [who] likes to hit,” Sorbrand said.
