CHICAGO — Jeff Blashill ate at a lot of Chicago restaurants in his first season as Blackhawks head coach.“Mart Anthony saw enough of me,” Blashill said.As good as that Italian food may be, Blashill would have preferred to have his family with him in Chicago.“Listen, I think life’s always better when you’re around people you love,” he said. “And so, not having my family around here, it certainly wasn’t the best part. I wouldn’t sacrifice my focus or preparation to be away from my family. In a perfect world, we’d all be together, but it’s just not the way life works sometimes.“It was a year in which I got a chance to really dig into the job. My kids are all kind of going to be off in school in some fashion next year, and so really, (it’ll) just be my wife and I next year. I’ll drive her crazy, and she’ll go back and spend some time in Tampa. But overall, it was a really, really enjoyable year in this city, enjoyable to get to know the city better on a day-to-day basis.”This is Part 2 of Blashill’s interview with The Athletic. You can find the first part here.(Note: Questions and answers have been lightly edited for length and clarity.)Now that you’ve been through a season with Kyle Davidson and Blackhawks management, do you find you’re aligned in opinions and decisions?They’re not necessarily always similar, but (we have a) great understanding of where each other’s coming from. … We have a great respect for each other — aren’t always going to see things exactly eye to eye, and that’s great, but we have super healthy discussions when we don’t and when we do for that matter. … We ultimately want to win at the highest level here, and that’s what kind of dictates everything we do, and our discussions are always centered around that.Are you keeping tabs on guys like you did when you were first hired? I know you reached out to a lot of players last offseason. Yeah, I will. I haven’t talked to all of them, but certainly talked to a number of them. I will continue to kind of reach out and see where their training’s at. Everybody’s summer’s different. Sometimes guys get to a level where physically their bodies are where they need to be, and they kind of know their routines. Some guys, we need to have great summers physically and get more out of their bodies. So we’ll keep tabs on all of them, but that’ll be something I’ll sit down with our strength staff and make sure that we’re kind of being the mirror for them, that they’re approaching the summer the way they need to be to come back in and be as successful as possible.A big question remains for the Blackhawks: Who are the perfect linemates for Connor Bedard? (Kamil Krzaczynski / Imagn Images)A major part of the discourse around the team, even before you arrived, was about finding Connor Bedard’s ideal linemates. Is that a priority for you? For a portion of last season, he was excelling with André Burakovsky and Ryan Greene. That obviously didn’t last. Do you see finding him the right linemates as an essential piece to building this team?I think for certain finding a player that — almost a pair that accentuates his skill set and that other player’s skill set. Connor’s a really, really smart hockey player, very, very highly intelligent, sees things that a lot of other guys don’t see. Coming into the league, he was known for his shot, but he’s equally as good a passer as a shooter, maybe better. And so, finding a linemate who has kinda that same level of offensive hockey smarts, can think to that level, can both probably pass it and shoot it, finding a guy that’s a pair for him, that is certainly important.Who the other guy is sometimes it depends on what your makeup is. In a perfect world, you probably like someone who’s going to get pucks in corners, going to the net front, being hard at the net, stuff like that. Now you also have the whole team makeup in the different lines as well, but certainly, finding that right fit with Connor is important.