In full transparency, this blog was at first going to recap the Corey Crawford signing with the Devils and the Brandon Saad trade to the Avalanche.
However, rich discussions were had over the weekend on the message boards and other great sites dedicated to the Blackhawks have covered both stories extensively so I didn’t want to devote space here to a topic that is surely to continue playing out on the boards.
Instead, I want to provide you with what I hope is unique content so you have different perspectives to consider as we as a Blackhawks fandom can round out what we know and how we think about the direction of the team.
And fans of other teams, you’re of course welcome to join in, too!
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So for this blog, I want to spend time defining what lanes we are talking about when we say the Blackhawks, management, Stan Bowman, etc -- however granular you want to get -- need to “stay in one lane” and what it means to stay in the selected lane
For the past five years ever since the last Stanley Cup Championship in 2015, there have been varying degrees of debate about whether the Blackhawks should retool or rebuild. What does each term mean exactly?
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RETOOLING
In the Blackhawks case, retooling has generally meant to maintain the core while adding role players around them that are cost effective due to a significant proportion of cap space taken up by monstrous contracts -- specifically by Jonathan Toews, Patrick Kane, and Brent Seabrook. Duncan Keith’s contract is reasonable in comparison.
The members of the core also have no trade clauses which make it tough to move them but that assumes the team actually wants to ship any of them out.
Another NTC factor is the loyalty to a fault that the organization has had to them with one reason being the household name recognition and brand appeal that give the franchise marketing muscle in a city dominated by the other pro teams -- particularly the Bears, Cubs, and White Sox.
However, the core has been decimated over the past few seasons with the loss of Niklas Hjalmarsson to the cap crunch, Marian Hossa to a rare skin ailment, Patrick Sharp to retirement, and Corey Crawford to free agency.
As the core got whittled down to half, when should it have made sense to stop the retooling each season and change lanes to the other alternative which is to rebuild. After one of the core was gone? Two of them? Three?
Now the core is at 50 percent. That may not just be in quantity but also in impact to carry the team to contender status again.
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REBUILDING
After Crawford was traded, Bowman said the following in an interview (transcript courtesy of
Charlie Roumeliotis’ article on NBC Sports Chicago):
"Now that we’ve made that decision [on Crawford], the way we’re going to move forward, there’ll be a lot more things we’ll talk about over the coming days, weeks, as we get into the offseason and planning next year’s team.
"We spent a lot of time talking about what the right direction was for us moving forward, and I think, not just on our team, but you’re going to see a lot of different things in the NHL this offseason, relative to other years.
"There’s an impact, league-wide and there is, maybe not every team, but a lot of teams are focusing on looking for young players who can take that next step and play a bigger role. That’s really more the direction that we’re headed more than it was anything besides that.
"We’re not trying to do anything other than to grow through younger players, give them an opportunity. We’re not going to have an entire team of young players. That’s unrealistic. I don’t know that’s a formula anyone’s using or that we’re saying here. What we’re trying to say is that, you do have to have an opportunity for young players to get into the league and play a role and to grow because that’s where you’re going to see progress. That’s how your team’s going to move to becoming an elite team, and that’s what we’re striving to be.
"The steps you can take to get there would be to give the opportunity, then help those players grow into bigger roles. We think we have a lot of good young players, pieces here who will play a huge role, but we want to incorporate more going forward. We think that’s the way to drive our team and to push us to the next level."
The critical pieces of Bowman’s words are the nod to a youth movement while balancing in the need for veterans to presumably guide and mentor. While it can be assumed that Bowman is referring to the remaining core, perhaps he isn’t necessarily commiting to them as those veterans.
Even though Toews, Kane, Keith, and Seabrook have NTCs, any of them could be rethinking whether they wish to remain a Blackhawk and considering waiving this clause. One indicator could be unhappiness with the recent losses of Crawford and Brandon Saad which may start pointing to disgruntled feelings and disenfranchisement.
Another crucial element in what Bowman said is the goal to increase the number of younger players which means adding on to the current crop of youngsters in Kirby Dach, Alex DeBrincat, Dylan Strome, Dominik Kubalik, Alex Nylander, Matthew Highmore, and Adam Boqvist.
For every rookie that comes in, a more experienced player has to move out. It may not be out of the question either that more than one first year player will be injected into the roster each season.
So how exactly do you balance in veterans if more inexperienced players are playing up on the varsity squad?
One way is to bid adieu to the older core and hand the reins over to a new younger core. Are the likes of Dach, DeBrincat, Kubalik, and Boqvist ready to step up as team leaders and faces of the franchise?
Another related method is to rely less on the core specifically but generally surround the young contingent with capable veterans -- even those who may have years of experience yet are still in their mid to late 20s -- who are willing to teach and role model how to be an NHL professional on and off the ice.
If those veterans happen to be Toews, Kane, Keith, and Seabrook, then that’s a plus but may not necessarily be a given anymore that it’s this foursome. Internal strife -- if truly existent within the organization -- is a driving force in this reality.
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DOING IT RIGHT
In yesterday's
article by Mark Lazerus of the Athletic, a league source stated via text message:
"They’re right to rebuild. But I’m not sure this is the way to go about it."
That statement by the league source is what is baffling. If the recent transactions of trading Saad and Olli Maatta and letting Crawford walk into free agency are considered harbingers of the rebuilding era, then aren’t the Blackhawks doing it correctly by parting ways with veteran players?
The short answer is yes. However, the longer answer is that shedding older players is just part of the equation. The other part is gaining assets -- namely prospects who project to be NHLers as well as draft picks -- to build for the future.
In the Saad and Maatta trades, there was some gain in cap space but zero gain in neither preferred asset types. No picks were added to Chicago’s hopper of capital for future drafts and the prospects acquired in Brad Morrison from the Kings and Anton Lindholm from the Avalanche are likely spending the entirety of their careers in the minor leagues or in Europe.
If the Hawks are in fact rebuilding, NHL-projectable prospects and draft picks need to find their way into Chicago’s coffers. Again, in two trades so far this offseason, net zero. There is still time to make more trades to acquire future assets, right?
Don’t fret about the lack of futures in the returns on the Saad and Maatta trades because the Hawks will most certainly obtain what is coveted in upcoming deals, correct?
Yes and no. While there is opportunity to make more trades, there is no guarantee that any of them come to fruition. This isn’t Capfriendly where you can log into GM mode and queue up the various trades you want to make then they happen all at once.
If Bowman can pull through on additional trades to procure prospects and draft picks, then the trades made so far may end up being fine on the balance across all of them. But what if the other deals that he is desiring to make don’t go down?
This is where each trade should secure future assets because it isn’t a given that there will be additional trades during the current window that is the 2020 offseason. There will be additional chances during the 2021 trade deadline and next offseason, of course, but precious time off of the rebuilding clock ticked away during the interim.
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See you on the boards!
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