Rookie defenseman Isaak Phillips looks like gem in Blackhawks’ mud

Isaak Phillips already looks like a fully capable NHL defenseman.

It couldn’t have been easy to stand out on this woeful Blackhawks road trip — a 4-1 loss to the lowly Blue Jackets on Saturday sent the Hawks home with zero wins and just two goals in the three games combined — but Phillips managed to do so.

And considering the total irrelevance of the wins-and-losses aspect of this Hawks season, his strong December showing is a positive worth appreciating.

The 21-year-old Canadian earned his first NHL point Saturday — in his ninth career game — with an assist on Andreas Athanasiou’s first-period goal, which gave the Hawks a rare 1-0 lead that turned out not to matter.

After Sam Lafferty put pressure on the Jackets while trying to exit their defensive zone, Phillips made what Hawks coach Luke Richardson called a “nice little play” to intercept an attempted breakout pass, hold the puck in at the blue line and set up Athanasiou.

That provided a nice statistical reward for Phillips’ consistently strong play since his Dec. 19 call-up, which has built on his incredible start to the season in Rockford. He has been one of the Hawks’ better defensemen in the five games since and seems to be getting even better as he settles in.

His pairing with Connor Murphy boasts a 53.5% scoring-chance ratio at five-on-five over these five games. They’ve been regularly killing plays in the defensive zone, helping the Hawks transition the puck the other direction and even jumping in offensively at the right times.

Richardson recently praised Phillips for being particularly effective and aggressive in the corners of the defensive zone, an area where the rest of the Hawks have encountered problems.

Take out an anomalous poor showing Tuesday against the Hurricanes and Phillips’ play looks even better — to the tune of a 57.9% scoring-chance ratio.

On Thursday against the Blues, the Hawks had a 10-7 advantage in scoring chances during his five-on-five ice time and a 13-6 disadvantage when he wasn’t on the ice. On Saturday, the Hawks had a 4-3 advantage with him and a jaw-dropping 22-5 disadvantage without him.

Those differences are enormous. And while impressive for Phillips, they’re rather embarrassing for the rest of the team.

Richardson was uncharacteristically critical of the team’s performance Saturday, but rightly so. Against a Columbus team that had lost seven straight coming in, the Hawks were terrible in the second period — going from tied 1-1 to down 3-1 without generating a single five-on-five scoring chance in the frame — and never recovered.

“[That was] one of our worst performances of the year,” Richardson said. “[We were] just disconnected. We’ve had a couple of those this year, not very many. Our guys, I’ve got to give them credit, they’ve pushed to the end most nights. Tonight, we were just frustrated and disconnected and couldn’t get it back. We had a pretty good start, the first half of the first period, and then we stopped moving our feet.

“We need to settle down, get our minds straight, stop yelling at the referees or at each other, come together as a team and play like that.”

Fellow prospect defenseman Ian Mitchell, inexplicably healthy-scratched for all three games on the trip, could be reinserted into the lineup Sunday at home against the Sharks as Richardson seeks a shakeup.

But Phillips has clearly jumped Mitchell in the organizational depth chart. His future looks bright.

What the Hawks do with Phillips when Jarred Tinordi returns from jaw surgery will be interesting. He has clearly proven his NHL abilities, yet he might be better served continuing to develop in the AHL rather than waddling for months in this Hawks dumpster fire.

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