Chicago Sports

A 2020 NBA re-draft would not go Patrick Williams’ way these days.

Not with a class that’s not only proven to have more depth than originally expected, but one that has already flashed some star power on playoff-bound teams.

Anthony Edwards has proven to be a legit No. 1 overall pick for the Timberwolves, the jury is still out on James Wiseman at two because of injuries, LaMelo Ball has turned the Hornets around going No. 3, and then fourth overall sits Williams.

More tease than franchise changer.

For now.

Especially when the likes of Isaac Okoro (5th overall), Tyrese Haliburton (12th overall), Saddiq Bey (19th overall), Precious Achiuwa (20th overall), Tyrese Maxey (21st overall) and Desmond Bane (30th overall) have been doing what they’ve been doing this season.

There’s no knowing if Bane would be “Bane!” with the Bulls, and he was never considered to be a top five pick. But imagine having a shooter like that, as well as a willing defender? There’s a reason Memphis is sitting in second place in the Western Conference and has a 19-2 record when MVP-candidate Ja Morant doesn’t play.

The Bulls, however, don’t have the luxury of playing the what-if game.

They have to do everything they can to turn Williams’ elite raw talent into something that translates on the court. Maybe, just maybe, that happened on Thursday.

It’s easy to lose sight of what the second-year power forward did in the overtime win over the Los Angeles Clippers, especially when DeMar DeRozan dropped 50. DeRozan sure didn’t.

While Williams was talking with the media in the postgame, waiting in the wings was DeRozan, who kept yelling “Big three pointer … we don’t win the game without it!” in Williams’ direction.

The veteran wasn’t wrong.

With the Clippers trailing by just one in the overtime and 58 seconds left, Williams let his trademark rainbow-arc shot go from deep in the corner, as his three felt like a dagger for the visiting team. DeRozan finished the OT with 10 points, but Williams had five, and more importantly was in the game at closing time.

Not bad for a guy that without prompting admitted to being late for the morning shootaround and getting fined for it.

“I’m not sure if you guys know, but I was also late to shootaround this morning,” Williams told the media. “I had missed some of the film session. I felt like I let the guys down.”

His excuse?

“Just being 20 [years old],” Williams said.

Obviously, not his only 20-year-old moment of the day, as DeRozan was shocked that Williams pulled back the curtain on his tardiness to the public. Locker room business is like the first two rules of “Fight Club” – it is not to be discussed to the outside world.

“Damn, who said that?Hesaid that?” a surprised DeRozan said, after he was asked about Williams showing up late. “I gotta tell him not to say that to the media. He’s tripping.”

In just his seventh game back from wrist surgery, Williams will earn a pass as long as he continues playing with the aggressiveness he did against the Clippers. The problem is he’s been here before, saying all the right things about looking for his shot and trying to impact the game. It’s time for action, not words.

“The guys challenged me,” Williams said of his halftime adjustment. “From the top, Coach Billy challenged me to be aggressive when I get the ball because they were trapping DeMar and Zach [LaVine]. They showed trust in me so I had to show trust in those situations. I wanted to pretty much answer the challenge and step up to the plate.”

That sounded like a No. 4 overall pick … finally.

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TAMPA, Fla. –Just as he expected all along, Brandon Hagel spent Thursday night in the same Tampa hotel as the Blackhawks.

But until two weeks ago, he never would’ve believed this caveat: he did so as a member of the Lightning, getting ready to face the Hawks in his seventh game for his new team.

As evidenced by his hotel-room living situation –although he “can’t complain about living 10 feet from the water” — Hagel is still adjusting to the city of Tampa and the Lightning. He’s still trying to find his niche and likely will be trying for the rest of the regular season, which the NHL’s two-time defending champions basically consider an experimental preseason for what comes next.

As his whirlwind March turns to April, however, the 23-year-old former Hawks forward is looking forward to what this unexpected new chapter of his career will bring.

“It’s really exciting,” Hagel told the Sun-Times on Thursday. “There’s 16 games left, and this is [about] figuring out how this team plays and figuring out my role and how I’m going to really help these guys down the road.

“Obviously my role in Chicago was probably a little bit more than it will be here. But [when] you look at the players on this team, it’s incredible. These guys have done so much in the past two years. I need to find a specific role where I’ll help this team win, and that’s all I want to do.”

Back on March 18, of course, his thoughts weren’t so put together.

He was “literally about to walk out the door” of Fifth Third Arena after practice that Friday, ready for the Hawks’ flight to Minnesota, when he was pulled up to general manager Kyle Davidson’s office.

“I went up and they had the [trade] conversation with me, but they couldn’t tell me where,” he said. “My mind was going pretty crazy. I was texting a lot of people saying, ‘I got traded, but I have no idea where.’ [It wasn’t until] a couple hours later I found out where I was going.”

Craziest of all was that the Hawks’ return for him –two first-round picks and two rookie forwards in Taylor Raddysh (who already looks like a savvy addition) and Boris Katchouk — exactly matched Hagel’s tongue-in-cheek assessment of his trade value after his Feb. 25 hat trick.

“That was a joke,” he said, laughing. “I didn’t actually think I was going to get traded for two first-rounders and two prospects. But here we are. That’s what happened.”

He actually didn’t think, despite the rumors, he was going to be traded at all.

“That’s kind of why I was joking around with [the media] a little bit,” he said. “But I was able to keep that positive mindset going to a team that has won back-to-back Stanley Cups. Everyone’s dream is to play in the playoffs and try to win a Stanley Cup, so getting that opportunity, I can’t be more thankful. And with them giving that much up for me, there’s no place I’d rather be.”

Friday’s game day will provide Hagel a welcome, if weird, opportunity to debrief with many of his former Hawks teammates.

He was only able to say goodbye to a few on March 18, since most had already left for the airport, so he hoped to make up for that with some hotel hallway run-ins and postgame chats. In between, he’ll have “no friends” on the ice –even former roommate MacKenzie Entwistle “is probably going to get a big body out there,” he said.

Friday will also provide Hagel another opportunity to start settling into a new rhythm.

He was glad he got his first goal with the Lightning out of the way quickly, scoring shorthanded against the Bruins last week, but that is his only point through six games.

His playing time has dropped from 17:28 per game with the Hawks to 12:09 so far with the Lightning, primarily on the third line with Ross Colton and fellow trade addition Nick Paul. The Lightning have been cumulatively outscored 4-1 during his even-strength ice time, and his shooting frequency has declined from 10.9 attempts (per 60 minutes) to 6.6.

Lightning coach Jon Cooper has nonetheless urged patience, telling him stories of deadline additions in previous years –such as, famously, Blake Coleman and Barclay Goodrow last spring –finding their strides and making huge impacts come the playoffs.

“They’re not going to just throw me in there to the wolves,” Hagel said. “They’re going to take some time with me, and I appreciate that. I appreciate them trusting me, and I trust the process. … I don’t want to just jump in and take someone’s opportunity. It’s one of those things where you have to earn it.”

And he has certainly proven adeptness at earning things.

“I’ve gone through it my entire career,” he added. “So it’s nothing new for me, starting from the bottom and working your way up. That’s what I’ve been known to do. So it’s just another day.”

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CHICAGO — When Chicago Bulls forward DeMar DeRozan returned to the locker room on Thursday night — having just willed the Bulls to a 135-130 overtime victory over the LA Clippers with a season-high 50 points — his teammate, Zach LaVine, sat and waited to present him with the game ball.

However, as DeRozan went to retrieve his prize, the rest of the team went into a frenzy, mobbing him and dousing him with water bottles in celebration of another clutch performance.

DeRozan scored 17 points in the fourth quarter and added 10 more in overtime to lead the Bulls to a 16-point second half comeback over the Clippers. It was his second career 50-point game and first since Jan. 1, 2018.

“The win is more meaningful,” DeRozan said after the game. “I wanted to win this game badly. You see how tight the [playoff] race is. Every single game is extremely important and we have no more room to be dropping any more games. That’s just my mentality.”

A win Thursday looked unlikely for the Bulls as the fourth quarter winded down. They trailed by three points with 7.2 seconds remaining when DeRozan got fouled by Clippers guard Terrance Mann away from the play on an inbounds pass, setting him up for a free throw that made it a two-point game.

The Bulls put the ball in DeRozan’s hands again for the final play and he got fouled by Paul George on a 3-point attempt. He knocked down the first two free throws but missed the third, sending the game into overtime.

DeRozan finished 17 of 26 from the field, 2 of 2 from 3 and 14 of 15 from the free throw line on Thursday with six assists and five rebounds.

“DeMar is unbelievable. After the game he said ‘sorry for missing the free throw,'” Bulls coach Billy Donovan said. “We wouldn’t have been in OT if it wasn’t for the things he did.”

The Bulls certainly needed DeRozan’s performance to lead them to victory and to keep pace in a crowded Eastern Conference playoff picture.

Chicago is just 7-11 since the All-Star break, but has won three of the past four games to stop its free fall in the standings. The Bulls are currently No. 5 in the conference, a 1/2 game ahead of the Raptors for the No. 6 seed and three games ahead of the Cavaliers to avoid the play-in tournament.

The Bulls’ next three games — Miami, Milwaukee and Boston — are against teams ahead of them in the conference.

“No matter who we play now, it’s going to be this type of physicality, atmosphere, aggression, being desperate to win, competing,” DeRozan said. “You’re going to get everybody’s best blow. You can’t run from anything. As a competitor, I always want to play the best of the best.”

DeRozan is in the middle of a career year in his first season in Chicago, but his production in March had slipped compared to the rest of the season. He had been averaging 25.8 points on 53.5% true-shooting this month entering Thursday’s game, a 10 point drop in both categories compared to his 34.2 points on 63% true-shooting in February.

DeRozan became the sixth player in Bulls history to score 50 points in a game, and first since LaVine did so in April 2021.

DeRozan also capped off one of the most prolific individual scoring months in NBA history. There were nine 50-point games in March, as many as there were from October to February this season combined, according to research by ESPN Stats & Information.

“That guy for us is special,” Donovan said. “He really is. I give him a lot of credit… the fact that he can mentally focus in and lock in on what he wants to get done and how he plays. Even just seeing him at the end of regulation, miss that free throw, he was bothered.

“Some of those guys they’re wired in a way that they have an unbelievable level of focus and concentration. And whether things slow down for them or their concentration is heightened, it’s pretty amazing to see him do.”

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There were moments for the Bulls.

Then again, there have been moments for this team for weeks. Just too many nights where there wasn’t enough of them. Finally, that changed on Thursday.

In one of the more head-shaking games of the season for the Bulls – and this time not a head shake of disappointment – they not only overcame an 11-point deficit with just under five minutes left to send the game to overtime, but then beat the Clippers 135-130 in the extra stanza.

Of course the star of the game was DeMar DeRozan, with the veteran putting a season-high 50 up, as well as recording his 27th game of the season with 30-points or more. Only Michael Jordan had more in a season for the Bulls.

“Heart, hard work, not giving up on nothing,” DeRozan said of the win. “We needed a moment like that … all of us. This is the best time of the year when everything matters. I just wanted to win this damn game badly, especially with how close things are in the East.

“I always tell these guys that as long as we got time on the clock we’ve got a chance.”

And oh those moments that gave them that “chance.”

The Patrick Williams cram with 7:36 left in the game to get the United Center fans to their feet and the home team to within five points of Los Angeles.

DeRozan again doing all he could to play hero, getting the left-handed hoop-and-foul with 2:55 remaining to pull his team to within four, and then hitting a clutch mid-range to cut it to three just over a minute later.

The veteran wasn’t done, either. He seldom is in the fourth.

Two more free throws with 1:05 left, and DeRozan pulled the Bulls to within three. Even Zach LaVine got into the action, with a put-back layup with 16.9 seconds left to make it a one-point deficit.

Two Paul George free throws with 11.8 left gave the Bulls a chance, and after a DeRozan slam it was the free throw game again, this time as Robert Covington made both.

Then craziness ensued.

With just seven seconds left and the Bulls looking for the game-tying inbounds play, Terance Mann was called for the rare away-from-the-ball foul, giving the Bulls a free throw and the ball. DeRozan made the free throw, and then on the possession was fouled by George on a three-point attempt. He made the first two, missing the third, and sending the game into overtime.

“It felt like a bomb went off in my head,” DeRozan said of the miss.

It was in that overtime that the Bulls finally put the nail in the coffin, and the wealth was spread around a bit.

Nikola Vucevic started the extra stanza off with a basket inside, Williams had another dunk and then a huge three-pointer, and of course DeRozan, who had 10 in the OT.

“That guy for us is special. He really is,” coach Billy Donovan said. “The fact that mentally, DeMar can focus in and lock in on what he wants to get done … some of those guys are just wired in a way in which they have an unbelievable amount of focus and concentration.”

With the win the Bulls (45-32) now find themselves still holding firm on that No. 5 seed in the Eastern Conference with just five games left.

“Those are the games we work for,” Williams said. “The blowouts are cool, but the down-to-the-wire games are the ones that mean the most.”

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Sox at Reds

Kopech makes first start

Making his first start of the spring, right-hander Michael Kopech gave up a homer to Reds leadoff man Jonathan India on his second pitch, then looked fine after that in two innings of work. Kopech struck out Tommy Pham and Brandon Drury looking, hit a batter and gave up the one hit. He touched 98 mph.

Despite his comparatively light workload in spring — Dallas Keuchel is slated for five innings Friday — Kopech is probably on target to slot into the fourth spot in the rotation. Right-hander Vince Velasquez, who followed Kopech with two scoreless innings Thursday, could piggyback Kopech in a multi-inning relief role when Kopech makes his first start.

Kopech is scheduled to start the spring finale Tuesday against the Padres.

Sox power

Yasman Grandal and Gavin Sheets hit their first homers of the spring against Reds righty Hunter Greene and Luis Robert’s double against Greene was his fourth extra-base, including two home runs, in the last six days. All four extra-base hits were to right center.

Haseley arrives

Adam Haseley, acquired in a trade with the Phillies Tuesday, arrived at camp and started in left field. The left-handed Haseley, a former Phillies first-round draft pick who figures to open the season at Triple-A Charlotte, was surprised by the trade.

“But the last 48 hours, I’ve kind of taken it all in, and it’s a good opportunity any time a team trades for you,” he said. “It’s a good opportunity to step in whatever role they give you and see what you can do.”

Haseley blooped a single to left field and walks his first two plate appearances.

On deck

Athletics at Sox, Glendale, 3:05 p.m., NBCSCH, 1000-AM, Adam Oller (0-0, 13.50) vs. Dallas Keuchel (0-0, 9.00).

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SUNRISE, Fla. — Captain Jonathan Toews’ 1,000th career game didn’t go much better for the Blackhawks than Patrick Kane’s 1,000th game did.

The Hawks’ respectable effort Thursday wasn’t enough to avoid a 4-0 loss to the Panthers, but it was a slight improvement from their 6-1 loss to the Stars in Kane’s milestone game in March 2021.

Still, one forgettable loss in an already-lost season hardly reduced the luster of the achievement.

”I’m very grateful to make it to this point,” Toews said. ”Mostly, I just want to share that appreciation with my teammates. . . . They were very good at giving me all the recognition and putting me on the spot with all of that. It was a special game, win or lose.”

Toews became the 366th player in NHL history to reach the milestone and only the eighth to do so entirely with the Hawks.

And although the franchise has been blessed with a steady stream of these milestones lately, Toews’ might be the last for a while. Defenseman Seth Jones is at 644 games, but most of those weren’t with the Hawks. Wing Alex DeBrincat is next in line in the only-as-a-Hawk category, but he has played in only 354 games.

Toews’ accomplishment is particularly special because of the health issues he overcame in recent years to reach it — he wouldn’t have been so far behind Kane if not for them — as well as its timing. It came right as Toews begins contemplating his future with the Hawks as they enter their rebuild.

With just more than a year left on his contract, it never has been more uncertain how much longer Toews will be the Hawks’ captain. But at least he reached this threshold with the ”C” on his sweater.

”[I’ve] really grown pretty close with these guys in this room,” Toews said. ”When you go through challenges and you have a season where there’s a lot of ups and downs [and] maybe you don’t make the playoffs, it’s tough to stick together. And this team has done nothing but that. So I’m definitely very appreciative to have been able to reach that mark with this group right now.”

The Hawks left a couple of unidentified ”little things” in Toews’ locker stall before the game to make him laugh, an irresistible temptation when dealing with a man so naturally serious. And they later lined up, NFL player introduction-style, along either side of the entrance to the ice to welcome him out for warmups.

Toews nearly gave himself the gift of a goal to celebrate the occasion, but he was stymied several times by Panthers goalie Sergei Bobrovsky, who made 37 saves.

Despite the final score, the Hawks actually finished with a 34-31 advantage in scoring chances.

”We just couldn’t get it by their goalie,” interim coach Derek King said. ”He stood on his head. We had numerous opportunities point-blank, and they were just not going in. And [against] a team like that, that’s [that] offensive, you drop your guard here or there, and . . . [it’s] game over.”

Added Toews: ”Sometimes you’re freaking out a little bit, and you should maybe have a little more patience. It’s just [that] you don’t expect to have time when you’re in the blue paint like that.”

Toews reached the 1,000-game plateau with career regular-season totals of 355 goals, 489 assists, 2,586 shots on goal, 796 takeaways and 11,220 faceoff wins.

He’ll be more grandly honored when the Hawks host the Coyotes on Sunday at the United Center.

”There’s still not a whole slew of guys that are [playing] 1,000 games,” King said. ”To get to that milestone, you’ve got to be pretty good. It’s hard to get there. Hats off to him.”

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Lonzo Ball knows the calendar is not on his side.

To the credit of the Bulls guard, however, he’s throwing that out the window.

According to coach Billy Donovan, Ball resumed his running program on Thursday, and while it was very basic, the hope is it will lead to a return at some point this season.

“I don’t know any of that stuff,” Donovan said, when asked if the program Ball was on would get him in uniform in time to be a factor. “I said last week, he’s a driver behind a lot of this. He really wants to play, but he’s also going to be smart in terms of how he’s feeling, and he’s going to be realistic.

“The doctors will put their heads together, but certainly every day that goes by and time that goes by, you’re moving closer and closer to the end of the season. I have not gotten anything from the doctors that said, ‘Listen, there’s just not enough time, we can’t get him back.’ They’re going to do everything they can to try and get him back.”

Especially with everything at stake.

In the wake of the Clippers game, the Bulls have just five regular-season games left. Ball hasn’t played a game since Jan. 14, when the left knee became too painful to deal with and he opted for surgery to repair his meniscus.

This on-going issue post-surgery, however, was actually a bone bruise, which was the initial red flag with the knee and what originally sidelined him.

Ball’s rehab was ramped up in late February and into early March, but he kept hitting a road block of pain as they started attempting sprinting and cutting. Rather than trying to power through it, it was decided less than two weeks ago to simply pause the rehab process.

Now comes one more attempt to push it again.

“Obviously with the amount of time that he had to kind of let things calm down, not going to go zero-to-60, there will be each day a little bit more, see how he does,” Donovan said. “But that process is going to start now, just to see how he responds. There’s been nothing with what he’s done, even with a little bit of work [Thursday]. I think they’ll be really smart in terms of he had time off to let it calm down, and now incrementally try and build him back up.

“So that will take a little bit of time just to see how he responds once we get him back to a place where we can try and get him that sprinting and cutting.”

But there’s a reason that Ball wants to return, and why the Bulls would welcome it. Before he was injured, Ball was not only the sparkplug for the transition game and playing like an all-defensive player, but he was shooting a career-best 42.3% from three-point range.

Ball was the perfect kick in the drive-and-kick for the likes of Zach LaVine and DeMar DeRozan, especially with how well he was shooting the corner three, which a lot of defenses have been giving up when they play the Bulls because of all the attention paid to LaVine’s attack game and DeRozan’s mid-range.

If Ball can start sprinting and cutting after the pause he took, full contact in practice would come quickly, and then he would get some restricted minutes in live games.

“We’ll see if this helps,” Donovan added.

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DING!

It’s a calendar notification:

”Opening Day.”

Hallelujah. Oh, joy. Insert eye-roll here.

It’s supposed to be Opening Day, but baseball saw to ruining that. Instead, it’s just another duller-than-dishwater Thursday. Thanks to the lockout, the season won’t start until next Thursday, April 7.

What to do, then? To the nearest ballpark!

Why? Absolutely no idea!

The Cubs were supposed to be in Cincinnati, so it’s not as though Wrigley Field and the streets surrounding it would’ve been hopping. But this? Who died? When did this neighborhood become a sleepy suburb? It’s eerily quiet for early afternoon. How strange to walk a lap around the entire park and not pass a single person who’s looking at it, interacting with it in some way or wearing so much as a stitch of Cubs gear.

It’s cold and gloomy, with a light rain turning into a light snow. We’re doing a better job of holding on to winter than the Cubs are of holding on to a championship era.

That settles it: A barstool beckons.

Alas, the Cubby Bear is locked. Bernie’s, also closed. Slugger’s, same. Casey Moran’s, negative. The Nisei Lounge, no dice.

Murphy’s Bleachers, jackpot. Wait, though, is this place empty?

There are a couple of drinkers near the back of the place. Surely they’ll be delighted to speak with an aimless reporter on a frivolous expedition.

”Nah,” one of them says. ”I’m getting ready to move anyway. No more Opening Days for me.”

”Can’t,” the other says. “I’m ‘working.’ ”

Ah, understood. Wink, wink. Nothing like outing yourself to your boss at the office by foolishly letting your name get into the paper.

Better order a beer. Besides, there’s basically nobody here. This might take awhile, whatever ”this” is. What was the reason for coming here again?

The bartender is not as busy as she would like to be.

”We would’ve had a lot of people in here watching the game on TV, cheering it on,” Nic Stang says. ”All the tables would’ve been full; the seating would’ve been full. Maybe 150 people.”

This will be her sixth season at Murphy’s. On the day of her first home opener, the Cubs raised a World Series banner.

”It feels less exciting now,” she says. ”I feel everyone’s a little less excited around the neighborhood. But we’ll see.”

The lockout didn’t help. The trades of Kris Bryant, Anthony Rizzo and Javy Baez — ”El Mago,” Stang’s No. 1 Cub — left a lingering pain.

”I guess I still have to find a new favorite player,” she says.

The staff at Murphy’s was ”freaked out,” she says — and ticked off at MLB’s owners — when the start of the season was pushed back. The Cubs were supposed to host the Cardinals on Monday and Wednesday of next week, and those games would’ve been huge for all the surrounding establishments.

Emmet Hynes is Murphy’s social-media manager. He’s a South Sider. A White Sox fan?

”South Sider,” he says with a wry smile. ”Let’s just leave it at that.”

Hynes, seemingly an optimistic sort, is looking forward to seeing all the Cubs’ new players. He’s on board with the Marcus Stroman and Seiya Suzuki signings and predicts fans in the neighborhood to be ”very welcoming — especially when they start to win.”

But then caution creeps in.

”There was such a love for the 2016 team and all those guys and, obviously, the three main guys they traded,” he says. ”It was like losing a bit of a family. Everyone kind of has to relearn the team here now. There’s probably not going to be the same kind of love and devotion.”

Behold, a new patron! Eric Midlock is on a house-hunting visit from Los Angeles, planning to move into the neighborhood of the team he loves. Just last week, Midlock and his brother, Joliet natives, were at Cubs spring training in Mesa, Arizona. They dejectedly had canceled their original travel plans a day before owners and players reached a new agreement; fortunately, they were able to scramble and reschedule.

”We go almost every year,” he says. ”It was fun, but I consider myself a diehard Cub fan, and I could only recognize, like, five guys on their roster. I knew [Willson] Contreras, of course.”

Sore subject. Contreras soon might be going the way of Bryant, Rizzo and Baez.

”That’s frustrating,” Midlock says. ”You’ve got this guy who’s one of the top catchers in the game, and you’re going to try to get rid of him? I don’t know about that.”

Midlock was ”extremely bummed” by the lockout and is far from the first to describe it as ”the millionaires against the billionaires.” He doesn’t think either side was genuine during negotiations and refers to ownership as ”hypocritical.” That goes for the Cubs’ first family, too.

”How poor the owners cried over the past couple of years,” he says, ”yet the Rickettses are able to go bid on Chelsea Football Club? That and just the whole, ‘Oh, we can’t play on March 31 because we need a whole month of spring training.’ Yet here we are, not having a full month of spring training, and we’re still opening up next week. I thought that was disingenuous.”

Midlock’s fandom isn’t wavering, but things just feel a little off.

”Even all those years the Cubs were bad,” he says, ”I was always optimistic for no reason at all, except it’s the Cubs. But I don’t think they’re going to be good at all. I don’t think they have enough players. They have so many holes in their roster.”

There must be something to which to raise a glass. Days gone by? Better ones to come?

”I love the Cubs,” he says. ”Frustrated a little bit, but I’m still here. Still coming back.”

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Two people died in a fire Thursday in Morgan Park on the Far South Side.

The fire broke out at a home near Homewood Avenue and Edmaire Street, Chicago fire officials said.

Two males died in the fire, officials said, adding that the blaze was extinguished by 7 p.m.

The cause of the fire was under investigation.

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SUNRISE, Fla. –The Blackhawks’ trade deadline departures have experienced mixed success in their first couple weeks with their new teams.

Brandon Hagel, whom the Hawks will meet Friday when they face the Lightning, has settled into a bottom-six role in Tampa and has tallied one point in six games so far. Ryan Carpenter was a healthy scratch in three of the Flames’ first four games after the trade, playing just 8:55 in his one appearance entering Thursday.

But Marc-Andre Fleury has already made his mark on the Wild, starting his tenure in Minnesota with two wins in his first two starts –stopping 23 of 25 shots against the Blue Jackets and 32 of 33 against the Flyers for a .948 save percentage so far.

Wild fans have even started a rather obvious new tradition that Penguins, Golden Knights and Hawks fans somehow overlooked: throwing flower bouquets on the ice during Fleury’s “star of the game” laps. A single bouquet for the first win evolved into multiple bouquets –and a rose — for the second win.

Vlasic in limbo

Young Hawks defenseman Alex Vlasic played two games after signing his entry-level contract, then started sitting out. He has now been a healthy scratch five consecutive games.

He is eligible to be sent to the AHL, CapFriendly confirmed Thursday. And though interim coach Derek King correctly noted that decision rests on general manager Kyle Davidson, it sounds like King would be in favor of it.

“It’d be nice to see him play lots of minutes — more minutes than he’d get here — especially at that level,” King said.

Friendly group

One reservation the Hawks might have about sending Vlasic down is that Rockford’s six-man defensive corps are so well-established.

Despite all the competition between those six guys –Ian Mitchell, Nicolas Beaudin, Alec Regula, Jakub Galvas, Isaak Phillips and Wyatt Kalynuk — for the less-than-six NHL opportunities that lie ahead next season, Mitchell and Beaudin both raved Wednesday about what a tight-knit group they’ve become.

“You see a lot of really good defensemen, a lot of really good players,” Mitchell said. “It definitely pushes us all to be better. But at the same time, a lot of us have grown a really good friendship. We’re actually pretty tight even though we are all competing for a limited number of spots.”

Honest King

Asked Thursday what he believes separates the Hawks from the NHL’s upper-tier teams, King gave a truly honest assessment of his roster’s flaws.

“Our guys, they work hard,” he said. “We compete. We are trying. [We have a lack of older players… We have young guys that are immature, stilllearning the game at this level, and it shows on the ice at times. It’s frustrating for some older guys.

“As a group, we make mistakes. Whereasthe top teams, when you watch them play, they don’t make too many mistakes. And if they do make a mistake, it’s ended then. It doesn’t snowball into two or three more mistakes. And that’s where we’re at. We can compete with these teams, and then we start making those mistakes later on in the game or in the second period, and that’s when we get beat up. It’s learning something we’re going to have to be better at obviously as we go on here, the final 15 games. And then whatever happens for next year, [hopefully] they continue to build on that.”

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