Stepping back and looking at the Blackhawks’ moves over the last 5-6 months, they may (or may not) be improved now, but it may not just be about this year.
Who remembers the three-dimensional chess game on Star Trek? I mean, on the old school, buff William Shatner Star Trek?
But I digress, the point is, too often we hockey fans evaluate trades and other personnel moves in a very limited context. More like one move in a one-dimensional chess game—or checkers—when the team was clearly thinking several moves ahead.
One example: I’ve already engaged one of the many thousands of “interwebs hockey experts” with regard to the Artemi Panarin–Brandon Saad trade.
Said expert proclaimed on a podcast that the Hawks got “taken to the cleaners” in the deal. When I asked him why, he said well, Panarin has more years left in his career and scores more.
So after I informed him that Panarin is actually a year older than Saad, and—at that time—had not scored as much as Saad with his new team, I also considered talking about the longer term salary cap implications of the moves, for both clubs. And then decided this guy wasn’t really interested in anything but “pointz” and 140 characters (at that time anyway) was never going to be enough to get through the meat in his head.
Save money + get younger = a rebuild (of sorts)
My roundabout point though is this: not nearly enough consideration is given in the Saad and Niklas Hjalmarsson trades of this past summer around the cap implications of both deals. Not only did the Hawks shave a few hundred thousand bucks off their cap commitment for this season—but they also averted their next “Cap-a-geddon” in the summer of 2019, when both Panarin and Hjalmarsson were due new deals, likely at significantly greater annual value for both players.
Put another way, the Hawks were not going to be able to keep either player (don’t kid yourself). Stan Bowman saw an opportunity to get cheaper and younger now. Meanwhile, the Blue Jackets (especially) and the Coyotes will have to figure out how to keep those players two summers from now.
And if you do a trade off between what the 26-year old Scott Darling ended up getting on the open market and what the 24 year old Anton Forsberg makes, you can start to see a pattern emerging.
No one should have ever expected Connor Murphy to replace Hjalmarsson. Bowman said it himself the night of the draft.
It can be argued however, that Murphy replaced Trevor van Riemsdyk as the right-handed, swing defenseman who occupies something in the 4-5 range on the depth chart. And in that regard, is appearing more and more to be an upgrade.
You still have sort of a hole where Hjalmarsson was—but that’s where younger, less expensive players like Gustav Forsling and Jan Rutta (both with a decent amount of pro experience in Europe and/or North America) are being given every opportunity to succeed (or fail some nights). It’s not perfect in terms of winning hockey like a juggernaut right now. It does seem to be all about the future.
Rolling the dice on young talent
Meanwhile, the organization seemed to commit in training camp to keeping arguably their top forward and defense prospects of the last couple of years, Alex DeBrincat and Forsling, in Chicago for the season.
It’s too early, in my opinion, to say that’s paid off. But both players have progressed fairly dramatically after rough starts.
This wasn’t like the “youth movement” of 2016, that saw 5 rookies, some with zero pro experience, on the opening night roster, often plugged into roles they weren’t suited for. Which is perhaps why, though some are now clamoring for it nearly 24/7, we haven’t seen Vince Hinostroza or Matthew Highmore in Chicago yet this season.
We may yet (and likely will) see Hinostroza, but my hunch is that will be due to injury, to a forward whose role Hinostroza can reasonably approximate.
The point is, it seems the Hawks are being a bit more patient, deliberate and judicious about young players than they were in 2015-16.
Where the team tried last year to maintain it’s core and then fill in with kids just out of Bantam (because that was all they could afford), this year they made big moves to pare back the core, brought in more talent (at both the AHL and NHL levels)—and gave themselves some cap room to do more meaningful re-engineering going forward.
What about this year?
While all the moves I’ve just discussed seem to be more of an investment in the future, there also clearly is not a total tear down underway either.
If you see, say, a Duncan Keith auctioned off to the highest bidder next summer, that’s a tear down move.
No, to the contrary, Bowman went out over the summer and also signed a few bargain basement veterans for his lower lines and pairings—Cody “Don’t call me Franzen” Franson, Patrick, Sharp, Tommy Wingels, Lance Bouma. Again, many lamented that these veterans would “get in the way of Vinnie.”
But those moves were meant to acquire the right kinds of players for those bottom 6 roles—not shoehorning a kid with more of a top 6 style game into a bottom 6 role (as the team tried to do—and failed with—in 2016). And it seems to be paying off in terms of a vastly improved fourth line (at minimum) this year.
So stepping back, what does it mean?
It means we’re in the midst, right now, of what you might call Phase 1 of the Great Hawk Rebuild we all knew was eventually coming—a “soft rebuild.”
I’d also be completely remiss if I failed to mention that the team is also without future Hall of Famer Marian Hossa. In all likelihood, we’ve seen the last of Big Hoss in a Hawk sweater. And like Hjalmarsson, Darling and even Panarin, Hossa’s absence has created opportunity for younger, lesser paid players, not to mention some more cap flexibility for this season through LTIR salary reduction.
What about Q?
A valid question that’s out there is how well (or if) Joel Quenneville will handle a full rebuild—or is that the time the team goes to more of a patient, “teacher” type of coach.
I don’t think, as we’ve said many times on the RinkCast, that’s happening this year.
And after this year, like so many things (it appears right now), that would depend on how the rest of this season goes—does the “soft” rebuild defy expectations and conventional wisdom and vault the Hawks back into Cup contention this year or next? And although the team is playing much better of late, even making the playoffs is not guaranteed for this year’s team. The rest of the league has gotten better the last couple of years.
Or does it produce middling results in terms of wins or losses (especially in the playoffs—if the Hawks even make it), leading to the next, more severe phase of the rebuild?
All for now,
Follow @jaeckel