OK, we can cross The Imperial March off the playlist. The one team no one wanted to win the No. 1 overall pick…didn’t win the No. 1 overall pick.
But the Chicago Blackhawks also didn’t lose the other NHL Draft Lottery spot for 2024, parlaying the second-best odds into retaining the No. 2 overall pick. They’re positioned to select a franchise-altering player, one year after they nabbed the next generation’s most franchise-altering player in Connor Bedard at No. 1 overall.
And whether the other 31 fanbases like it or not – hint: they don’t – the Blackhawks are positioned to be one of the most interesting and aggressive teams in the NHL this summer if they want to be.
Regardless of what happened in Tuesday’s lottery, that was going to be the case based on Bedard’s rookie season alone. The generational talent, hyped as NHL’s best prospect since Connor McDavid, delivered. Bedard’s season was abbreviated by a fractured jaw in the winter, but he tallied 22 goals and 61 points in 68 games. His 0.897 points per game were the most by an 18-year-old player in the last 35 years aside from McDavid’s and Sidney Crosby’s rookie campaigns. Those two icons made massive leaps in their second NHL seasons, both winning the scoring title and Hart Trophy and both ushering their teams into the postseason. It’s thus not inconceivable for a talent of Bedard’s ilk to do the same. Bedard, however, is working with a roster that has been stripped to the studs. So if Chicago wants to make major gains in the standings, it will have to drastically reshape what’s around him. And there’s reason to believe GM Kyle Davidson will do just that – this offseason.
For one, the Blackhawks may soon be feel they have reached a critical mass of prospects and can thus begin to ponder making some future draft capital available in a trade. Their top blueline prospect, Kevin Korchinski, showed the chops at 19 years old to make the club and has a season under his belt. The Hawks appear to have unearthed a gem in towering defenseman Alex Vlasic, who could become their top shutdown option for years to come after they inked him to a six-year deal at a $4.6 million AAV last month. Dynamic young center Frank Nazar turned pro and, while he may require some AHL seasoning, is at least inching closer to making an impact in the NHL. Super speedy, savvy center Oliver Moore will make his mark once he turns pro.
And that brings us to the second overall pick in the 2024 Draft. It’s true that this year’s class has an absolute wealth of talent on defense, including Artyom Levshunov, Cayden Lindstrom, Zeev Buium, Zayne Parekh, Anton Silayev, Sam Dickinson and many more. But Crosby had Evgeni Malkin, McDavid has Leon Draisaitl, and the Hawks have a chance to land Bedard’s long-term running mate by selecting Ivan Demidov second overall. His dynamic playmaking skillset gives him an elite ceiling in the vein of Nikita Kucherov’s. Demidov has just one season remaining on his KHL contract; adding him to the talent pool would set up Chicago as a dynamic offensive club for years to come.
The Hawks also have a second first-round pick belonging to the Tampa Bay Lightning in 2024, not to mention three second-round picks. Here’s where things start to get interesting. If we accept the premise that the Blackhawks could improve significantly next season by putting the right personnel around Bedard: does Davidson consider packaging that other first-round pick and attempting to trade for an impact player who is on the right side of 30? Think Travis Konecny or Nikolaj Ehlers, for instance.
A couple days after the draft, let’s factor in the Blackhawks’ projected $33.84 million in cap space for next season as the cap rises to $87.7 million. They’ve already re-signed Vlasic and goaltender Petr Mrazek. Bedard and Korchinski have two years remaining on their entry-level deals. The Hawks are positioned to outspend pretty much anyone should Davidson decide to behave aggressively. The Hawks wouldn’t want to anchor themselves to aging veteran talent, and it has been reported already that they are more likely to pursue short-term deals at this still-early stage of their rebuild. But there are plenty of impactful UFA forwards out there this summer. The list is vast, including the pie-in-the-sky names Sam Reinhart and Jake Guentzel, the grizzled legends in Steven Stamkos and Patrick Kane, and other impactful veterans like Jonathan Marchessault, Elias Lindholm, Tyler Bertuzzi and Matt Duchene. Now factor in that you can offer them the chance to (a) play with Bedard and (b) join a huge hockey market in a bustling city with a fan base that embraces the team when it’s in a competitive phase, and Chicago is well positioned to woo some high-end talent in its quest to reach the salary floor.
The Hawks don’t need to transform their bottom dweller into a contender overnight. But given the progress of their youth, the rapid improvement of their prospect corps, their draft pick capital and their cap space…it will be virtually impossible not to enter 2024-25 with a much better team than last year’s.
Get your wins in now, Central Division. The Blackhawks will begin to cook in the next year or two.
