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Quenneville raves about ‘special’ Teravainen after ‘Hawks camp

Dallas Stars v Chicago Blackhawks

Teuvo Teravainen

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Feels like Teuvo-mania is about to take off again.

Teuvo Teravainen, Chicago’s highly-touted center prospect, wowed onlookers at the Blackhawks’ recently-completed prospects camp and did a good job of impressing the most important guy of all -- head coach Joel Quenneville.

From ESPN Chicago:

“Today you get to see him play in a game situation, you see his abilities jump out,” Quenneville said Friday. “I thought he had a special day today. Over the course of the week, you can see his skills. When you put a puck down and you’re playing for real, you see his vision, anticipation and how he’s creating with the puck, and his anticipation offensively is excellent.

“He’s only going to get better with both sides of the puck as he gets over here and familiar with our game. Certainly fun watching him play and envision him playing where he’s going to be at some point in his career at the top end of the game. That’s an exciting guy to watch.”

The big question now, of course, is where Teravainen plays next season.

Long thought to be the solution to Chicago’s 2C problem, Teravainen has some serious competition for that role in the form of Brad Richards, who signed a one-year pact with the ‘Hawks in free agency. While the 19-year-old Finn said it’s still his goal to make the NHL out of training camp, he also said he’s more than comfortable starting the year in AHL Rockford.

Which, to tap the brakes for a moment, is probably the smart move.

For all the talent Teravainen has, he’s still only played eight games on North American soil, three of them coming with a short cameo in a Blackhawks uniform near the end of last season. While it’s true he’s used to playing with men at the professional level -- he starred for Jokerit of the Finnish league in 2013-14, scoring 44 points in 49 games -- there’s something to be said about the value of cutting one’s teeth at the American League level for a while before jumping to the bigs.

Regardless, it sure sounds like Teravainen is going to push for an NHL job this fall.

“I’m just trying to get my spot, of course,” he explained, per ESPN. “Like I said, my goal is to play NHL and I’m going to go to training camp and try to get it.”