CHICAGO — Jeff Blashill has been addicted to watching this season’s Stanley Cup playoffs.For the coach of the Chicago Blackhawks, that’s not all that surprising. But it’s not like he hasn’t been an NHL coach before.“I would say, I’ve probably watched more of this playoffs than I have ever,” Blashill said on a recent afternoon in his office at the Blackhawks Ice Center, the team’s practice facility. “Not to say I hadn’t in the past, but I’ve watched a lot and from a lot of different angles. A little bit of the coaching decisions, you know, matchups. How hard are teams matching? What are their tactics when they’re trying to match certain players? To calling timeouts, to challenging, to all those things, just seeing what other coaches are doing.”Then, he’s looked at the style of play.“I’m a huge believer there’s a lot of different ways to play hockey,” Blashill said. “I know that because different teams win a lot in different ways. So, there isn’t like a style that has to fit your personality, your team. But within the different styles of the way teams play, what’s a common factor in success? For example, if you want to score in this league, you have to be really, really hard at the net. And that just shows in the playoffs over and over and over again. It’s just a good reminder to me that, hey, that’s gotta be a priority coming into next year, things like that.“So, it’s been fun to watch. And just different players having success and how they’re having success and why? Is it the right chemistry? Is it the team at the right time? Is it all those things? So just kind of watching all that has been a good continued education process for me.”It’s been nearly two months since Blashill and the Blackhawks played their last game. He has mostly been at his home in Florida since then and will spend time in Michigan for another part of the summer. During a brief stop back in Chicago, Blashill sat down with The Athletic to talk about the playoffs, this past season, the future and more. This is part one of the interview.(Note: Questions and answers have been lightly edited for length and clarity.)Do you feel like you saw a defined playing style from the Blackhawks this season?It’s a good question. I think I would say, yes and no. Yes, in a sense that I think our guys understand certain things that are important to me — taking time and space away, pressuring in almost what I would call smart pressure, some of what we talked about in the penalty kill. But I also think it’s hard to really show your identity as a team when you don’t have the puck enough, and we didn’t have the puck enough. I think that’s just for numerous reasons, mainly because we’re really, really young. And so, I think your style gets more on display as your team grows and continues to get better and better.Do you think you want to do anything different next season?I would say, from a systematic standpoint, I wouldn’t anticipate any big changes within our systems. One of the advantages I think that teams have that have been together for a while is that systems become second nature to them. And so, you don’t have to think about them. You don’t have to practice them as much. And then, you can practice different things. So, I think from a systemic standpoint, don’t anticipate major changes.I thought from an offensive standpoint, our expected goals on line rushes … was fairly good. From an offensive zone standpoint, I think there’s more offense to be created in our O-zone. A little bit of where our emphasis is in the O-zone is something we’re going to look at through the course of the summer and make sure we have a good plan. Other than that, systematically, it’ll be similar, which is important too because our training camp’s shorter and we’re playing more games.