CATCHING UP: Chyzyk living dream as Black Hawks GM

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This article was published 20/06/2023 (1080 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

For most hockey players, the dream is to reach the National Hockey League.

In the case of Virden’s Bryn Chyzyk, his goal was to help find the talent that helps teams win a championship.

“I’ve always been fascinated with evaluating players,” Chyzyk said. ‘When I was 10 or 12 years old, I would be busy making up my NHL mock drafts.”

After his playing days wrapped up in 2017, Chyzyk entered the world of scouting a couple of years later as an American scout for the Manitoba Junior Hockey League’s Virden Oil Capitals while he pursued a law degree at the University of North Dakota.

In 2020, he was hired as the director of scouting for the United States Hockey League’s Waterloo Black Hawks and was promoted to the general manager role in the summer of 2021.

“It’s kind of funny to think about but this is what I’ve wanted to do since I was a young kid,” Chyzyk said.

“When our general manager at the time (Shane Fukushima) took a job with the Philadelphia Flyers, the team elected to hire from within and I was fortunate to get a break there.

“The ownership but a lot of trust in having a young guy like me go into that role and I’m really thankful for it.”

After the Black Hawks posted a 28-30-3-1 record in 2021-22, the 30-year-old helped to build a roster that ended up second in the USHL’s Western Conference with a 40-21-1-0 mark last year.

Although the team’s season ended in the quarterfinals after being upset by the Lincoln Stars, Chyzyk’s work was noticed by his peers as he received the league’s general manager of the year award last month.

“Those are all guys that I look up to and I try to lean on from their previous experiences so that was pretty cool to receive that honour from them,” Chyzyk said.

“Obviously, we would have liked to have gone further in the playoffs, but it was still a really exciting season here.”

In a way, Chyzyk’s path to his current role started in 2011.

Following a 71-point campaign with the Dauphin Kings, he ventured down south for a training camp with the Fargo Force, where he had 49 points in 53 games.

He then spent four seasons in the NCAA with the North Dakota Fighting Hawks and recorded 47 points in 128 games. His time in Grand Forks culminated in 2016 as he helped the school win its eighth national championship.

From there, he split time with the American Hockey League’s Rockford IceHogs and the ECHL’s Indy Fuel in 2016-17 before hanging up the skates due to a series of concussions.

“I was actually telling my story to one of our prospects who was down here for our prospect camp over the weekend and it hit me that I’ve been down in the United States now for almost 13 years,” Chyzyk said.

“That’s kind of crazy to think about but I’ve been pretty fortunate with how things have shaken out to end up in the position that I’m in now.”

One of the biggest influences in Chyzyk’s path to becoming the Black Hawks GM was the coaching staff that he played for at North Dakota.

Dave Hakstol — who is now behind the bench for the Seattle Kraken — was the head coach for the Virden product’s first three seasons, while current Fighting Hawks bench boss Brad Berry and longtime assistant Dane Jackson were there for Chyzyk’s entire tenure with the program.

“They taught me a lot about player evaluation and learning to compete,” said Chyzyk, who served as a graduate assistant coach with the program before going to the Black Hawks. “A lot of what they did really helped to influence how I like to do things here.

“I also like seeing how the other general managers in our league handle certain situations. There’s still a lot for me to learn and I’m already trying to follow along with what NHL guys are doing in terms of how they build rosters.

“I’m like a sponge right now just trying to take it all in.”

Chyzyk — who works alongside Black Hawks president of hockey operations PK O’Handley and head coach Matt Smaby — says his role is extremely similar to those that hold general manager positions in the Western Hockey League.

The biggest difference though is that in the USHL, players can be drafted from anywhere in the United States, Canada and Europe.

“It’s a massive pool of talent that we are trying to cover and we do our best to put the work in and learn about everyone that we can, especially here in the United States,” Chyzyk said.

“The game’s growing all over and trying to get a book on all of that talent can create some headaches.”

During a typical week in the regular season, Chyzyk is in contact with the team’s staff to recap the previous weekend’s games and what is upcoming on the schedule for the Black Hawks.

In between, Chyzyk is usually scouting talent at a game or one of the many showcase tournaments that go on during the season.

With that in mind, he’s actually based out of Minneapolis and makes the three-hour trek south to Waterloo on a bi-weekly basis.

“There’s so much hockey going on here with high school and NAHL (North American Hockey League) games that you can pretty much be at the rink on a nightly basis,” Chyzyk said.

“Scouting is still my passion and I like to see everything as much as I can, so it just made a lot more sense to base myself here.”

The Black Hawks have done a good job of producing NHL talent over the years. Joe Pavelski, Brandon Montour and Brock Boeser were all drafted out of the program.

Goaltender Emmett Croteau was a sixth-round pick by the Montreal Canadiens in 2022 and the team has four players that are ranked by NHL Central Scouting ahead of next week’s draft in Nashville.

“Competitiveness is our buzzword here,” Chyzyk said. “We want guys that are fast, but we also want guys who want to win so bad.

“As the games get harder, those are the kind of guys that show up when the games matter most.”

It’s also important to keep up in a league that has grown tenfold since Chyzyk played in the circuit.

While the USHL has always drawn the top young American players — especially as the United States National Team Development Program takes part in the circuit — more talent from Canada and Europe are coming over to the league before going to the NCAA and eventually being drafted by NHL sides.

“There’s obviously a lot of opportunities for junior hockey in Canada, but down here there are only 15 junior teams, so the competitiveness just to make it on one of these teams is extremely high,” Chyzyk said.

“There’s such a large player pool to draw from and you are seeing the talent level continuing to grow, which matches up with how much hockey has grown here in the United States. I think that’s started to attract high-end Canadian talent like Owen Power or Adam Fantili that want to keep their NCAA eligibility.

“It’s great to see the league getting better and I think it’s only going to grow from here.”

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