CHICAGO — The Chicago Blackhawks may have a better idea of their starting lineup for the 2025-26 season opener than for the Oct. 12 opener at the Colorado Avalanche.
Perhaps a bit of hyperbole, but with any luck, 2022 first-round picks Kevin Korchinski, Frank Nazar and Sam Rinzel will all be in that future lineup.
“Coming into today (Thursday), if I figured we would add Kevin Korchinski, Sam Rinzel and Frank Nazar I wouldn’t have believed you,” general manager Kyle Davidson said on draft night in Montreal. “Sitting where we are right now with the prospects we just picked up I’m pretty damn happy.”
But to get them, the Hawks had to trade fan favorite Alex DeBrincat (Ottawa Senators) and Kirby Dach (Canadiens), kicking off what could be a mass exodus of the current roster.
“It’s difficult to trade any young player, especially young contributors like we did today is not easy,” Davidson said.
With their leading scorer in DeBrincat gone, there’s little reason to bring back linemate Dylan Strome, a restricted free agent with arbitration rights — or fellow RFA Dominik Kubalík, for that matter. Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews could be weighing whether they want to stick around for the tear-down.
If last season’s 28-42-12 campaign was a drain on the three-time Stanley Cup-winning duo, this season could leave them feeling empty.
Anyone else is fair game, particularly veterans (Tyler Johnson? Jake McCabe?) Davidson could ship off to contenders before next year’s trade deadline.
“Going through a rebuild is not fun. Doing things you have to do to get to where you want to go is not fun,” Davidson said. “So there’s going to be tough days like this where you see familiar faces and faces that we in management and the fans know and love, but it’s necessary.”
“It’s all about the process. It’s our job to make sure that the assets that we bring in make the decision the right one and make it justified.”
That’s the quibble many fans had (based on the social media uproar) with Davidson’s draft-day wheeling and dealing — at least in DeBrincat’s case.
But Davidson defended his move.
“I did feel that this was his maximum value today,” he said. “I didn’t feel the need to do it but when we got a top-10 pick on the table, I thought that was something that, if we could build a package around that, I thought it was really important to do. The value of those top-10 picks are far more valuable and great than multiple picks later on in the first round.”
Rebuild or not, giving up a 24-year-old All-Star winger for the seventh overall pick (Korchinski), a second-round pick Friday and a 2024 third-rounder feels as underwhelming as Brandon Hagel’s haul — two conditional first-round picks in 2023 and 2024 and two prospects from the Tampa Bay Lighting — felt pleasantly impressive.
In fact, when you take a step back, the DeBrincat trade looks even worse.
When the dust settled, the Hawks essentially swapped DeBrincat for defenseman Seth Jones — and moved down a slot in the first round to do it.
Perhaps it’s a bit of oversimplification, but the Jones deal with the Columbus Blue Jackets on draft day a year ago for multiple high-round Hawks picks created a domino effect that greatly contributed to DeBrincat’s departure, a case of general manager malpractice by Stan Bowman.
Bowman mortgaged the future for a player he couldn’t pass up.
”You’re trying to put yourself in a position that when a player of Seth’s ability and caliber becomes available, that you’re in a position to, No. 1, have the assets that it would take, and No. 2, have the cap room to be able to do it,” Bowman said on draft night last year.
“Not too often do those things always line up. There’s a lot of luck in the timing.”
Doesn’t feel so lucky in hindsight, and the vacuum Bowman created couldn’t be more ill-timed.
Jones’ addition, along with a couple of other acquisitions last summer, not only didn’t help push the Hawks into playoff contention, but Bowman’s hasty retool attempt cratered and created Davidson’s impetus for the Hawks to launch a rebuild.
In the final tally, the Hawks gave up DeBrincat, Adam Boqvist, the No. 12 pick of the 2021 draft (which became Cole Sillinger), the No. 44 pick in 2021 (Aleksi Heimosalmi) and this year’s No. 6 pick (David Jiříček).
In return, the Hawks netted Jones, the No. 32 pick in 2021 (Nolan Allan), the Nos. 7 (Korchinski) and 39 (Paul Ludwinski) picks this year and a 2024 third-rounder.
How the rest of this sad saga shook out is squarely on Davidson, who stepped into the role of personnel boss after Bowman stepped down in October in the wake of the Kyle Beach scandal.
If Davidson coaxed two conditional first-rounders from Tampa Bay in the Hagel package, certainly DeBrincat would draw a king’s ransom, right?
What the Hawks received, however, was not that.
The first-time GM came off like he played a savvy, patient poker hand in the Hagel deal, but it looks as if he folded on this one.
Davidson said earlier this year that “it would be nice” to recover a first-round pick, but “we’re not going to force anything.”
Does trading DeBrincat for a first and second in a so-so draft, along with a distant third-rounder, sound forced?
The Hawks might say their hands were tied because a trade partner would have to have the present and future cap space to handle a monster extension for DeBrincat, but that kind of reasoning sounds as if you’re trying to force something.
And you can draw a straight line from Bowman’s malfeasance last summer to Davidson’s desperation in this draft.
What’s so puzzling is that the Hawks didn’t acquire one of the Senators’ prized prospects, such as defenseman Jake Sanderson or center Ridly Greig, who ranked second and 18th on TSN director of scouting Craig Button’s top 50 NHL-affiliated prospect list in April.
“Ottawa to me (has a) terrific prospect pool,” Button said on TSN.ca. “You talk about Tim Stutzle and Josh Norris as your top two centermen. Ridly Greig is an outstanding third-line center.”
Davidson said the Hawks “considered” acquiring prospects but ultimately opted not to.
“We didn’t really push too hard because their second (rounder) was rather high,” he said. “That’s why we leaned toward that second pick so we could put our own stamp and our own philosophy into that player.”
Nor did Davidson hold out for a first- or second-round pick in 2023, which is widely considered to possess a better talent pool than this year.
Hawks amateur scouting director Mike Doneghey told the Chicago Tribune last week this year’s draft is “deficient in the amount of franchise or generational players.”
“There are some good players,” Doneghey said. “I don’t know that there may be defining franchise players right now, i.e. the (Cale) Makars, (Nathan) MacKinnons, Patrick Kanes.”
Next year’s draft appears to have a deeper talent pool.
Doneghey looks at Connor Bedard, Adam Fantilli and Matvei Michkov as no-brainer franchise players at the top of 2023 draft and expects a few others to force their way into the conversation.
For the 25th slot, which the Hawks used to select Rinzel, all Davidson gave up was a second-rounder (38th overall) and the space to take on goalie Petr Mrázek’s salary, giving the Toronto Maple Leafs the cap relief they needed.
And the Hawks don’t have to tread into free agency to find a starting netminder.
But Davidson appears to have gotten the better of the Dach trade.
Nabbing 13th and 66th overall picks for the former 2019 No. 3 pick somehow feels like thievery given the lackluster start to Dach’s career.
Canadiens GM Kent Hughes said he checked within the Hawks organization and around the league and dug into Dach’s game and character, “and we were comfortable with everything we heard.”
Oh well, it’s Hughes’ headache now. Maybe he thinks faceoffs are overrated.
Still, there’s a void DeBrincat and Dach will leave in the Hawks locker room.
First-year coach Luke Richardson is trying to bring order to a team that lost its top offensive weapon and a well-respected teammate in DeBrincat, who was selfless enough to pitch in on the penalty kill when asked.
Toews grumbled about the Hawks’ direction when they traded Hagel, so you only can imagine his reaction to this development.
Even Kane has to question if staying in Chicago is worth enduring this dismantling.
TSN analyst Pierre LeBrun asked agent Pat Brisson about Kane, but Brisson said they’re not “going to make any decisions or comments at this point.”
Bottom line: The Hawks’ decisions, past and present, put a lot of pressure on their 2022 rookie class to pan out. That’s at a minimum.
The hockey world will tally all that the Hawks gained in the long run from giving up DeBrincat, Dach and cap space and judge whether the Hawks should’ve demanded more.
Make it make sense.
