The first week of a new season is always full of weird results and overreactions. That will especially be true with the short training camp and the short preseason. So let’s talk about some early observations, and the teams and situations that I want to see play out over the next few months.
Nothing about these observations is a definitive statement on the season for the teams or players.
It is just a first impression and my curiosity that comes from that.
The Blackhawks are one of the more recent teams that went with a full-scale, tear-it-to-the-ground, all-out-tank rebuild. It started late in the 2021-22 season with the Brandon Hagel trade. It continued in the summer of 2022 when they dumped Dylan Strome and Dominik Kubalik for nothing, traded Alex DeBrincat and Kirby Dach for draft picks, and set the stage for a full-court press to get the best possible draft lottery odds.
It resulted in them being one of the worst teams in the league during the 2022-23 season, while the lottery balls fell their way to land Connor Bedard. That was always the goal from the very beginning. Along with the lottery pick to get Bedard, they accumulated several first-and second-round picks in addition to that, and in the ensuing seasons kept picking at the top of the draft due to the lack of success on the ice.
It produced a good prospect ranking, but also a lot of bad hockey at the NHL level.
They won 26 games in that tanking season to land Bedard.
In Bedard’s rookie season they won 23 games.
In his second season they won 25 games.
In his third season they won 29 games.
To call that slow, incremental improvement is probably an understatement.
They are now in year four of his career, and are putting a roster on the ice to open the season that is absolutely loaded with young, unproven players that are being thrown to the wolves. Through two games they have used nine players that are age 24 or younger, including six players that are 22 or younger. It’s a lot of inexperience. It’s a lot of players that are completely unproven. It’s also a lot of players that may not be ready, or may not have earned a regular NHL role.
But because the Blackhawks are so fully committed to this rebuild ,and all of these picks, they’re being thrown out there.
The early return through their first two games has been bad. They have played two of the most non-competitive games in the league over the first week.
It is worth noting that Bedard has not played in either game, and it is not yet known when he returns to the lineup. They also played two potential Western Conference Stanley Cup contenders in Vegas and Utah, so the competition has been fierce. Playing those teams, without your best player, is a problem.
But they simply do not look ready.
And that’s what I want to see play out this season.
Do these guys get better?
Does the team get better?
How much improvement can actually happen in this environment?
To pull a Penguins comparison here, a lot of fans and media were confused throughout the summer and training camp as the Penguins kept stockpiling forward depth, creating a situation where there were not a lot of openings for young players to be given roles. Given that the Penguins are in the process of a rebuild (although a very different type of rebuild than the one Chicago has been embarking on), people want to see youth on the ice.
How is Rutger McGroarty going to get ice time?
Where is Ville Koivunen going to fit?
What role is Avery Hayes or Tristan Broz going to get, or are they destined to another year in the AHL?
Things like that.
The question you should be asking, both in Pittsburgh and Chicago (and anywhere else, honestly), is why should they create a situation where players are just given opportunities?
Why aren’t you expecting people to earn it?
Why are you willing to trust a season to a bunch of young, unproven players, many of whom are not going to pan out? (And that latter point is going to be true for every team, with every prospect pool).
Why aren’t you asking “what are these guys going to do to force ice time?”
Not all of these guys are going to be good, and if somebody hasn’t shown you definitively that they are ready, it’s probably a good sign that they might not be ready. So how much benefit are you getting by just letting them sink in the NHL and get dominated every night? They’re probably going to get run over … badly. At that point losing becomes a habit. It becomes an expectation. And the outside noise eventually celebrates it because it keeps improving your draft position to keep adding more people like them.
At some point losing breeds more losing.
Competition makes everybody better, and that mindset should be in place here. Nothing should be given.
Did the Blackhawks just resign themselves to being a young team and not making enough efforts to bring in more competition or better players? It sure seems that way.
We will see how it works, both now and in the future.
Most contending teams only end up having a few home grown players on it by the time the team is good, anyway.
I want to see how this goes, and how much they improve over the season.
Sometimes this path works. More often than not it fails.
Speaking of first impressions, none of that even gets into the first two games the Blackhawks’ $12.5 million man, defenseman Bowen Byram, played for the team.
They were … not good. Not from the eye test, and certainly not from the numbers test.
The numbers test is especially grim with a 29 percent expected goal share despite getting heavy offensive zone starts. When he was on the ice, he was getting demolished.
I said before the season that analyzing his season is going to be madness because he’s going to score enough points to make supporters of the trade and contract think they are right, but he might not make enough of an impact anywhere else so that critics of the trade and contract think they are right.
Nobody will give an inch on it.
The reality with Byram is that he is what he is: And that is probably a No. 2 or 3 defenseman.
The Blackhawks are paying him like a No. 1 defenseman.
If he were a No. 1 defenseman, he would not be on his third team before turning 26.
The first impression? Not great.