Unlike last season, when the Blackhawks’ most disruptive developments seemed concentrated in the second half, they hope their most disruptive moments of this season are already behind them.
Connor Bedard’s first month in the NHL spotlight, Corey Perry’s contract termination, Taylor Hall’s season-ending knee injury and the death of defenseman Kevin Korchinski’s father have all made the season “a little more turbulent than we would have liked,” general manager Kyle Davidson told the Sun-Times on Friday.
“There have been some bumps, but every season has them,” Davidson said. “Hopefully we’re over ours and we can focus on improving every little bit on the hockey side.”
To that end, Davidson doesn’t anticipate being nearly as active in the trade market this winter, leading up to the March 8 trade deadline, as he has been the last two years.
That’s hardly a surprise. In 2022, he dealt wing Brandon Hagel in a shocking blockbuster and found a new home for goalie Marc-Andre Fleury. This year, he traded arguably the best player in franchise history, wing Patrick Kane, after an extremely drawn-out lead-up (and moved forward Max Domi, too). It would be almost impossible to do anything comparable with this roster.
And while the Hawks have a number of pending unrestricted free agents, Davidson might not execute many trades, even small ones, over the next three months.
“We have a wealth of assets,” he said. “That puts us in a position that we don’t need to go and trade guys just to build up our base [of draft picks and prospects].
“You don’t want to be closed off to anything, but you also want to be mindful of the team this year and players you might want to keep around next year. That likely means keeping some guys that, maybe in years past, we would have considered to move along.”
The Hawks also don’t want to completely decimate the roster surrounding their valuable rookies for the 19 games after the deadline. They have more reason this season to ice a competent lineup all the way through the April 18 finale.
For the record, their pending unrestricted free agents include forwards Nick Foligno, Jason Dickinson, Tyler Johnson, Anthony Beauvillier and Colin Blackwell, defensemen Nikita Zaitsev and Jarred Tinordi and goalie Petr Mrazek. Foligno, for one, sounds far more likely to be re-signed than traded.
“For some players that teams might have interest in, [we’ll decide if] we want to hold them back,” Davidson said. “We’ll see how that goes. I don’t really have a sense for [this year’s approach] right now the way I did the last two years.”
Although Davidson will consider any opportunities to add talent at a low cost — as he did when he acquired Beauvillier from the Canucks for a fifth-round pick Nov. 28 — he also won’t be aggressive on the buying front.
It was telling that he didn’t make any moves besides AHL call-ups during the Hawks’ recent wave of injuries on defense.
“You have to be mindful of numbers, and as much as it’s tough to have that many people out . . . you know it’s not going to last forever,” Davidson said. “For example, if we were to go out and acquire two defensemen in the last couple of weeks, then all of a sudden [it’s], ‘What do we do with these guys?’ But we’re certainly open to anything that comes our way.”
One area where Davidson will be more active is in preparations for the draft. The Hawks have a decent chance to earn another top-five pick and already own seven selections in the first three rounds.
“This is another strong draft this year, so you can’t help but get a little bit excited when looking at the options,” he said.
More from Davidson
The fact the Hawks don’t anticipate trading many of their pending free agents doesn’t mean they plan to re-sign most or all of them instead.
They will have to be selective about which guys they bring back. After all, the majority of the entire roster is on expiring contracts at the moment. In addition to the aforementioned UFAs, the list of pending restricted free agents includes forwards Lukas Reichel, Taylor Raddysh, MacKenzie Entwistle, Reese Johnson, Joey Anderson, Cole Guttman and Boris Katchouk, plus defensemen Alex Vlasic, Isaak Phillips, Louis Crevier and Filip Roos.
“You don’t want to — if you’re looking to bring people back — necessarily go out and re-sign everyone,” Davidson said. “That makes things a little tougher later on. Not that you’re regretting anything, but you want to allow some of the younger players to develop, as well, and you don’t want to close off anything to them. We’ll think through things in the new year and see where we want to go with some first steps.”
Because they have so many expiring contracts — only five forwards, three defensemen and one goalie on the current NHL roster are under contract for 2024-25 — they’ll need to spend tens of millions of dollars next summer just to reach the salary-cap floor.
As a result, Davidson will have a nearly blank canvas upon which to repaint the roster for the ascension stage of the rebuild.
“The one thing we’ve found in this league is it’s a lot easier to spend money than it is to get rid of money,” he said. “[Considering] the number of options that came up this [past] summer at the draft, it doesn’t seem like getting to the floor will be a big issue for us. It’s [about] finding the right people to spend money on, whether internally or externally.”
