The Blackhawks plan to send Eric Daze and Ethan Moreau back to their junior teams and Mike Prokopec to Indianapolis Thursday.
But coach Darryl Sutter is still excited.
“Those three kids, everybody should be excited about,” he said. “They’re not flash and dash, but they’ve got their heads on right, and they’re going to be good players. They’re intelligent and great competitors. All they need is seasoning.”
Young goalie Christian Soucy is still in the fight for the backup role to Ed Belfour.
“We’ll take Soucy back to Las Vegas with us,” said Sutter. “He played well last night (in San Jose).”
A few holes: Jeff Shantz and Joe Murphy each scored his first goal of the preseason in Wednesday night’s game, and defenseman Keith Carney had a pair of assists.
“But with Steve Smith, Chris Chelios, Gary Suter and Eric Weinrich not here, it was fairly obvious that some of our defensemen couldn’t handle their forwards,” said Sutter.