With a wealth of financial capital last offseason, the Chicago Blackhawks were one of the busier teams on the free agent market, signing Tyler Bertuzzi, Teuvo Teravainen, Laurent Brossoit, Alec Martinez, and Pat Maroon, among others, to supplement their young core. The Blackhawks showed slight improvement, increasing from 52 points in the 2023-24 season to 61 points in the 2024-25 campaign.
In late May, Chicago named Jeff Blashill as the new head coach and took an entirely different approach this offseason to supplement their roster. At the time of writing, the Blackhawks have only added André Burakovsky through a trade with the Seattle Kraken and signed Sam Lafferty on the free agent market. The lack of movement was a little surprising, given that Chicago had more than $20MM in available cap space heading into the summer months.
Ultimately, this was by design. In a recent interview with Tracey Myers of NHL.com, Blackhawks General Manager Kyle Davidson acknowledged that the team would not make many moves this offseason to keep roster spots open for some of their younger talent to graduate. When asked about his lack of offseason moves, Davidson said, “Trading for Burakovsky, I think Lafferty was more so a reaction to the market where we can get someone we know, a little shorter term, a little more flexibility there. And then we didn’t want to put any players in front of some of the young guys that we do think are ready.”
Even though he only added a few NHL-caliber players, Davidson still doesn’t believe there are enough spots available for every young player they’d like to see at the NHL level. The fourth-year General Manager said, “Now we have enough young players that there aren’t enough spots for all of them to play, so there will be battles there and they’ll keep each other accountable, keep each other honest on earning spots here in the NHL. But we do feel that a couple of them are ready to really take a role and run with it and be a positive impact on the team.”
The Blackhawks possess an impressive amount of young talent. Outside of Connor Bedard, Frank Nazar, and Kevin Korchinski, who are already shoo-ins for next year’s roster, Chicago has the opportunity to recall Sam Rinzel, Artyom Levshunov, Oliver Moore, Nick Lardis, Ethan Del Mastro, and Colton Dach, to name a few, to the NHL roster on a full-time basis.
Still, as Davidson noted in the interview, those available roster spots will not be handed to any prospect simply for their accomplishments at the amateur and semi-professional levels. Players will have to compete for their spots on the roster, which could make the Blackhawks more challenging to play against, as nearly every player would be vying for a position.
There’s no expectation that Chicago will compete for a playoff spot this upcoming season, especially in a top-heavy Central Division. Considering that many prospects are close to being recalled, the Blackhawks have opted to delay their roster changes until the regular season rather than making adjustments during the summer months.
I’ve been a big fan of the Hawks (and Sharks) rebuild, but I’m starting to realize that they are doing more 2008 or 2013 style rebuild where you amass a ton of high pedigree young players and grow them into a juggernaunt of a core.
The problem is that now second contracts are basically third contracts and you’ll only be able to pay (keep) a few of them.
Hey Kyle –
How ’bout we win some games?
I’ll stick with my earlier prediction –
The Hawks won’t see the playoffs this decade.
I’m starting wonder I get they want a shot at McKenna who doesn’t. But some GMs are running rebuilds like some guys run fantasy teams. Chase prospects and neglect the main roster. It’s a formula that rarely pays off as noted above you’ll only keep a few and how many never make it?? Plus you risk pissing the fans off and even losing some
For as much as everyone is saying the Hawks are tanking for McKenna, the fact is the market dictated on what they did. All the big names really didn’t reach FA. And I’m glad KD didn’t go full Stan Bowman and overpay for some 3rd line player. We have a lot of young talent, you’re gonna have to eventually let them play.
I think the play is for 2026 to be the Year of the Hawks. Next year you have Kantserov and Frondell will be here next year after they both play this year in Pro Leagues. You’ll have Rinzel and Arty having played all this year in the NHL hopefully. Korchinski has the potential to break out and show what he can do this year. You have Moore, Thompson, Nazar, Slaggert and Lardis hopefully stepping up. There’s a lot to look forward to. McKenna would just be a cherry on top of the Sundae at this point.
I think all Hawks fans would rather see the kids play at this point than have Davidson sign a bunch more 4 million dollar FA’s. They weren’t going to be able to get the real 10-15 million dollar ones that would be instant difference makers. You have to make them want to come here. You do that by building a solid young squad.
While I’m not writing him off I definitely don’t have Korchinski on my shoo-in list. I was much more impressed with Arty and Rinzel (albeit small sample size) and still don’t think Korch has lit it up in the minors. I’d actually start him in the minors and go with Rinzel, Lev and Del Mastro.
Lafferty was actually acquired for a 6th from Buffalo, he wasn’t a Free Agent Signing