The Chicago Blackhawks have had another terrible season. Though they'll likely receive another young star through the 2026 draft, it's time for Chicago to be a competitive team in the later stages of the regular season.
Once again, it’s been another brutal season for the Chicago Blackhawks. The Blackhawks came out of the gate with a 14-18-7 record, and since Jan. 10, Chicago has gone 9-14-6, sinking to the bottom of the Central Division and to 15th place in the Western Conference. Only the Vancouver Canucks have been worse than the Blackhawks this season.
Still, it’s not like better days aren’t ahead for the Hawks, and really, they couldn’t get much worse. But while it’s great for Chicago to acquire another elite young player with a high pick at the NHL draft, it's getting to a point where it’s time for the Blackhawks to turn the corner and start winning games rather than leaning on a draft process that kicks the can down the road.
Now, we’re not suggesting there are specific young players Chicago GM Kyle Davidson needs to trade. The rest of this season is essentially an audition for some youngsters to earn a full-time job next year.
But at some point, the Blackhawks need to begin moving the needle toward becoming more competitive in the regular season. And for Davidson, such decisions can be made by paying a high price through trades and free agency.
Davidson has carved out $40.2 million in salary cap space for next season. And although some of that will have to go to pending RFA and superstar center Connor Bedard, that’s still going to leave Chicago with all sorts of cap space, and very few prominent other free agents to lock up this off-season.
So there won't be an excuse for Blackhawks ownership and management to be stingy and throw nickels around.
Of course, Bedard will have to do much of the heavy lifting to get the Blackhawks into a playoff position next year. But before he was injured this season, Bedard was one of the top point-producers in the league.
Connor Bedard (Matt Krohn-Imagn Images)The 20-year-old is only scratching the surface of how good he can be. Still, when the Blackhawks are going up against superstar center Nathan MacKinnon of the Colorado Avalanche, or superstar left winger Kirill Kaprizov of the Minnesota Wild, Chicago needs a generational player like Bedard to be competitive.
After this year's draft, Hawks fans are going to have another high-end young prospect to invest their time, emotion and money in. But sooner or later, you can have too many young players and not enough proven veterans. That’s where Chicago could be in the not-too-distant future.
As we’ve seen this season, there are still plenty of holes in this Blackhawks roster. And the veterans that Davidson has brought in haven’t been enough to elevate Chicago’s overall game.
The Blackhawks currently have the league’s eighth-worst defense, allowing 3.21 goals-against per game, and they have the NHL’s third-worst offense, scoring 2.55 goals per game. That should tell you how much work still needs to be done here.
It’s fine that Davidson and his staff have built the team through the draft. That was the right choice, and eventually, Blackhawks fans will be happy they did so. But before long, Hawks fans need to see the team climb the ranks of the Central and the West.
It’s been six years since the Hawks played playoff games, and it may still take a while before they play them again.
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