Chicago Blackhawks general manager Kyle Davidson wanted to clear up at least one thing about the Taylor Hall trade: He was going to move Hall sooner or later.
So Friday’s three-team deal was just a means to an end, with the Hawks acting as a way station for the Colorado Avalanche and Carolina Hurricanes to swap blockbuster players Mikko Rantanen and Martin Nečas. The Hawks got a third-round pick.
“It was pretty minimal on our side, obviously a pretty big deal,” Davidon told reporters Monday at Fifth Third Arena. “I think there’s a little bit of confusion on what our role was in it. We were happy to get the asset that we got back.
“In moving Taylor, it was something that was probably going to happen at some point.”
The elephant in the room is that the Hawks didn’t land a whale themselves.
In the aftermath, it begged the question: When will the Hawks take a big swing?
Tyler Bertuzzi, Teuvo Teräväinen and Alec Martinez were nice additions in the offseason — some others, not so much — but they haven’t moved the needle for a team that’s surprised to find itself with the NHL’s second-worst record at 15-29-5.
At least the Hawks technically had Rantanen — temporarily, on paper — so they could retain half of his $9.25 million salary and transfer him to Carolina. Adding $4.625 million to the books and using up a retention slot is worth a third-round pick as compensation, right?
But I digress.
If Davidson plans to make a play for a big name, he’s not telegraphing his pitch.
“We’ll see,” he said. “It’s January. I have no clue who’s going to be available in six, seven months.
“We’ll continue to consider once we know who’s actually available and what makes sense. A lot can change in the next six months, basically, before we get there. I will say you’re never ruling anything out.”
With each personnel move and every news conference, we get a better sense of Davidson’s team-building philosophy, his guiding star.
From the outset, when he first took the helm in October 2021, that had been prospects.
Three years later, would he be receptive to wading into the deeper end of the free-agent pool, where the Rantanens, Mitch Marners and Brock Boesers reside?
“Well, I think every team needs players like that,” Davidson said, referring to no star free agent in particular. “But when you get that player and who those players are, it’s really tough to say what the right fit is.
“And the other thing, too, is we’re one of 32 (teams) and everyone wants star players. We’re not a one-team league. It’s not the Chicago Blackhawks get to pick players and go get them and off at the races. It’s a competitive league and everyone wants to win.”
Here are my reactions to Davidson’s responses to several questions.
1. Why would a free agent pick the Blackhawks?
Davidson said: “It’s an Original Six (franchise), an incredible organization, an incredible city. There’s a lot of really exciting high-end talent coming up through the ranks.
“We’ve got the volume of players that are going to allow us to — once they develop — be a very effective group, an exciting group, in front of an incredible fan base that supports their hockey team. And so I think we’ve got a lot of selling points. I’m not too concerned about that.”
My reaction: The Hawks have been hovering around last place most of the season. Their current coach, Anders Sorensen, is serving on an interim basis, so whoever’s behind the bench next season (unless it’s Sorensen), it will be a new system and potentially a first-year coach.
The Hawks don’t even have a rough timeline for making the playoffs. This doesn’t speak to a stable environment.
The “incredible city” spiel might lure tourists, but free agents are looking much deeper than that.
Yeah, there’s a lot to be concerned about.
2. What’s your assessment of Anders Sorensen’s performance?
Davidson said: “I think he’s done a nice job so far. We’ve seen a little bit of highs and lows. … Some of the habits and some of the mentality we have as a team has improved in my opinion. There’s some things we still need to clean up, especially when we’re playing with leads.
“But the fact we’ve been pushing and been able to generate offense earlier in the game and putting the team in a position to have to hold leads is a good thing, and holding leads later into games and getting results has been nice lately.
“But there’s still a mentality that continues to need to change and play right through the 60 minutes on the front foot rather than sitting back and trying to play a little more conservatively.”
My reaction: Davidson said this with a straight face after back-to-back periods (the third versus the Tampa Bay Lightning on Friday and the first versus the Minnesota Wild on Sunday) with one shot on goal, a franchise first.
Yes, it’s a couple of games, but this team has been prone to some troubling lulls. Check the most recent second periods.
One thing Davidson said is true: Sorensen created a spark by being more aggressive. But he has been lulled lately into playing Luke Richardson’s more conservative game (or maybe the players default to that).
Sorensen is probably as desperate as anyone in the building to get this team to play up to its modest potential, but he hasn’t had much success. Granted he has had his share of near misses, but so did Richardson.
Just out of curiosity, I asked NHL Stats and Information to look up how Sorensen stacks up against other Hawks coaches through 23 games, and his record (7-13-3) is identical to one name in particular: Jeremy Colliton.
I’ll pause for that shiver to run down your spine.
In fairness, there seem to be few similarities between how Sorensen and Colliton run a team, but it illustrates how tough it has been to turn the tide in the post-Joel Quenneville era.
Here are some of the coaches’ records in Sorensen’s orbit:
- Luke Richardson: 7-12-0-4
- Alpo Suhonen: 7-12-2-2
- Anders Sorensen: 7-13-0-3
- Jeremy Colliton: 7-13-0-3
- Mike Keenan: 6-13-4-0
- Dirk Graham: 6-14-3-0
3. What is Kyle Davidson’s assessment of his own performance?
Davidson said: Before the season opener, “I don’t necessarily think I mentioned we were out of the rebuild stage. In terms of a rebuild and building up through our young players, a lot of the players are still in amateur hockey, so we’re not out of that. We can’t lose sight of that.
“Did I expect us to be better than second (to) last? I did. But that doesn’t at all mean that I’m concerned about the bigger picture here, about the bigger process at play here in terms of where we’re headed and how good this group and this young group coming up can be. That hasn’t changed at all.
“I’m probably more optimistic having seen the years our young players are having throughout the organization. I’m probably more optimistic now than I was in the summer in that respect. Having said that, for this group at the NHL level, I did expect a little more and we made a coaching change because of that.
“The NHL team, I wish we did have a little more success here in the first half than we have. But it doesn’t diminish the progress I think we’re making (in the) big picture.”
My reaction: Fair enough. We’ve always known the Hawks are playing the long game. I don’t believe anyone has said differently.
Perhaps it’s an issue of semantics.
You bring in veterans and say you “certainly hope we’ve taken a step,” or that merely competing nightly in the NHL is a “low bar,” and that seems to suggest you hoped to reach a higher plateau than the “tank” era of the last couple of seasons. (Of course, you’ll never get Davidson to admit the team tanked for Connor Bedard.)
If you didn’t expect to be steadily moving out of the rebuild phase, why spend millions on veterans only to later fire Richardson and kick off yet another sell-off with Hall?
