NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Slowing down Oliver Moore can be a challenge.

He thinks fast. He moves fast. So when he gets on the ice, he’s seeking high speeds to satisfy his body and mind.

So when Katie McDonough, the owner of Cutting Edge Performance Power Skating, first met a 10-year-old Moore in Minnesota and tried to slow him down, he couldn’t exactly compute.

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“Ollie, he wants to move now, like yesterday,” McDonough said on Thursday. “To get him to do that, he didn’t enjoy the process in the beginning, but he knew it was necessary.”

That necessity came from Moore’s belief that his skating could open doors. For one, he wanted more speed than he was creating. Second, the NHL was his dream, and elite skating could get him there.

Over the last roughly eight years, Moore, with McDonough’s assistance, has nearly achieved all of those goals. He was considered the fastest skater in the 2023 NHL Draft class. Largely for that ability, the Blackhawks drafted Moore, a center prospect, with the No. 19 pick on Wednesday and moved him that much closer to becoming an NHL player.

For a team focusing on building a lineup full of speed, nobody fit the bill better than Moore this year.

“Pace, fastest player in the draft, high motor, work ethic and, again, just a great attitude, team-first guy, team-first concepts,” Blackhawks general manger Kyle Davidson said. “Plays fast, plays hard, relentless. Love it. … We had Oliver way higher than we picked him. We were constantly trying to move up for a lot of picks. I was on the phone the whole time, almost from when I got back to my seat to when we went up on stage (for the first pick). I was working the phones trying to get up with him in mind. So, it’s almost a perfect scenario where we just stayed, we didn’t have to give up any extra picks to get up and get him. We just stuck at our 19th overall and got the guy we were trying to get anyway.”

Moore took a long road between his work with McDonough and today. She saw the potential immediately but also recognized a lot of flaws in his technique. Fixing it meant returning to the basics.

“We took him backwards, all the way back to learning how to glide and where his weight should be and when he should start to rise out of his hips and his knees,” McDonough said. “From there, put a lot of time into repetition to break a bad habit to now bringing him to an opportunity where he can produce with speed because his habits are good. Now every motion we’re building speed instead, before we’re just at a standstill. He was moving really fast, but he wasn’t going anywhere fast. That’s pretty much what brought him to here.”

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McDonough had to persuade Moore to be more patient in his movements. If he took more time to maximize his movements, he’d build more speed, even if it felt counterintuitive.

“The first time he felt it, he knew why we were doing what we were doing and then he was addicted to it,” McDonough said. “He wanted to get more speed, faster. But I always say, the players feel like if they move their body fast, they’re going fast, instead of allowing themselves to maximize from the movement. They won’t take the time to reach that full stride and get the biggest push out of it and then carry the foot tempo into that. They’ll move too quick out of that, and that’s what helps take them horizontally and then that gets them standing in place moving real fast. So, patience.”

Moore continues to go back to McDonough year after year following his season because of her vast knowledge of skating — but also because he understands her.

“Stride is pretty complicated, but she just does her best to help us simplify it for me,” Moore said. “I think that the biggest thing that she said is just stay low and be explosive.”

Moore has done that. He learned to be patient but could learn even more. He and McDonough often talk about Dylan Larkin’s game and how he attacks the defense and finds lanes through traffic. Larkin slows down in order to speed up.

“For Ollie, another big thing is he’s got a fast mind,” McDonough said. “It’s about how we’re allowing his feet to move fast but not in front of the plays he’s trying to make and/or to read the ice better. Getting him to build the speed and find the time to ride the edge for a second or flow through the ice a little and find that space and using that opportunity to create the space and then build that speed up to get in and out of it quickly with the puck and make a play.”

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As Moore moves up levels, McDonough thinks he could have even more potential alongside teammates with similar speed. He might be able to open up more for them and vice versa.

Moore’s final stop could be the Blackhawks, but first, he’ll go to the University of Minnesota. That means McDonough, who was in Nashville for the NHL Draft, can easily drive to his games and see in person what they need to work on next.

“It was very special,” McDonough said of seeing Moore drafted in person. “I have vivid memories of him showing up to the rink in the morning watching a game the night before, asking, ‘When can I skate like Connor McDavid or Cale Makar?’ And now, he’s in the same conversation. It’s cool. It’s very special for him.”

To get a better idea about Moore’s abilities, I watched three of his games from this past season. One was playing internationally for the U.S. and the other two were in the USHL playing for the U.S. National Team Development Program.

Here’s what stood out:

A lot of these clips show off Moore’s tremendous speed.

This is Moore playing four-on-four on a large ice sheet, but it’s still pretty special.

Moore’s first three steps create so much speed, which he and McDonough put a lot of time into.

“If you’re low enough, your body has less opportunity to do the wrong thing,” McDonough said. “The higher you are, the more opportunity you have to do many things wrong. The muscle memory that he’s established from the constant repetition that he puts in, he does some things off ice that just help carry over to his on ice. … His first three steps are on his toes and it’s just the small-twitch muscles, engaging them as fast as we can. … If you establish those, you’re already one step ahead of the guys who forgot to do those or are not working the first three steps.”

This is another example of that.

The two goals Moore scored in the two games were from similar spots on the ice.

Finally, here’s one more drive to the net.

(Photo: Christopher Hanewinckel / USA Today)