It was an interesting weekend for the Blackhawks, who got rid of former Hart Trophy winner Taylor Hall in a blockbuster trade and still remain at a crossroads when it comes to their ongoing rebuild. While the team has to exercise patience and isn’t a contender yet, they can’t just continue to sit at the bottom of the standings next year, or they’ll risk losing some of the fan base and players like Connor Bedard could suffer adverse effects.
On Monday, GM Kyle Davidson met with the press to hopefully shed some light on the direction of the team’s rebuild. While the Blackhawks’ general manager preached patience with the current regime, he was disappointingly noncommittal to making a splash this summer.
“There’s a lot of exciting things going on in our prospect pool that I think deserve attention. That’s where we’re building this thing, right? It’s through our young players and they’re showing up and they’re performing and they’re doing everything that we want and need them to do to give us confidence that we’re on the right track. And so their play and their development is showing us that we are on the right track, that we are trending the right way. Now they have to keep doing that. They have to keep repeating that and keep stacking those development wins continually moving forward, but they’re doing everything that we want them to do and more, and so it’s really exciting.”
- GM Kyle Davidson
Davidson said he’s more confident in the rebuild now than he was a few months ago, and for good reason. Nick Lardis, Roman Kantserov, Sam Rinzel, Oliver Moore and Sacha Boisvert are all among those having spectacular seasons in their respective leagues, with several others putting up big numbers as well. Davidson highlighted Frank Nazar, mentioning that his production was a bit ahead of what the team anticipated.
While the GM expressed plenty of confidence when it came to his own prospect pool, he took a more cautious approach when addressing talent outside of Chicago’s system. Everyone expects (demands) the Blackhawks to make a big move this summer – the team is armed with plenty of cap space and draft picks for a trade or free agency addition, and they’ve reached the point in the rebuild where they need to add a top scorer to the lineup. While that’s certainly the expectation, and something Davidson said he’s “extremely open” to, he didn’t make a firm commitment to doing so.
“It's got to be there for you to act upon. If something comes along that makes sense, then [I'm] certainly going to act. But I can't manufacture that myself.”
- GM Kyle Davidson
Fair enough. If he made a commitment to adding a superstar, then didn’t, it wouldn’t be too popular with Blackhawks fans. We’ve talked here about Chicago grabbing a player like Mikko Rantanen this summer, but if the situation isn’t right, something like that could do more harm than good. Fans will continue to flood social media with impatient comments about needing to win now or firing Davidson, but we won’t know how well this rebuild has worked until all of his draft picks are ready for the NHL. When that day comes, will an outside superstar have already been on the roster? Even the GM doesn’t know.
