NEWSLETTER
Blackhawks general manager Kyle Davidson appeared on the “Mully and Haugh” Show on 670 The Score on Friday morning to bask in the glow of winning the NHL draft lottery once again. And the questions right out of the gate were focused on how quickly Connor Bedard is going to impact the organization on the ice.
We’ve already talked about the lofty praise Bedard has received for months here. Since the lottery, people like Craig Button have said Bedard puts the Blackhawks on the path to a championship; he’s the kind of player you build a winner around.
One of the first question he received was about the fact that he now has all of these picks — eight in the first three rounds in the 2023 draft alone — and a boatload of cap space to play with. Will he get more aggressive building the roster around Bedard now that he knows he has the No. 1 pick?
Davidson has been steadfast in his comments from the time he took the job that the NHL isn’t a single-player solution sport, and that there is still value and necessity in volume as much as the elite, high-end talent. And his answer reminded us that he’s still in the early stages of his build program.
“[The Blackhawks’ collection of picks and cap space is] obviously all favorable. Almost everything there is by design — minus the No. 1 pick, because that’s something that’s just good fortunate. But the draft picks, the cap space — it’s all by design and for good reason in this rebuild. … I think what we’ve seen and how we’ve studied the landscape in the NHL is that you can really stunt your ceiling and your upside as a team by spending too early.
Hopefully we’ve got enough good players, good young players coming in as the new core that you know what? They’re going to require most of that salary cap space. And the last thing we want to do is acquire all of these young players, all this exciting young talent and draft capital, we use it, they get here, and then we jump too early in free agency in our life cycle and now we can’t play some of those young, great players. That’s the last thing we want We’re going to be intentional about it. We’re going to stay focused on acquiring the best young talent we can.”
That’s the conservative approach we’ve consistently heard from Davidson, who — again — has remained measured in his excitement about how Bedard changes the short and long-term future for the Blackhawks.
But one more answer from Davidson also serves as a reminder that he’s in it to win it. This isn’t a “make the Blackhawks relevant again” rebuild plan. He wants a ring — or more than one. And he wants to do it right. And, thus far, he wants to do it from scratch with players he identifies as those his program and coaching staff can win with at a high level.
While Davidson is confident that his draft assets in this year’s draft can help that process, he was once again cautious with the idea of putting either a timeline or a ceiling on players or the organization right now.
“I think the great thing about this draft, it’s such a great draft and especially great near the top. There’s some really, really elite talent available. That’s extremely exciting. The one thing that you never know in your build is how high the ceiling on some of your best players. That’s something we feel really good that we’ll be able to bring someone in with an extremely high ceiling, but we still have to do a lot of work to fill out the team around them. It’ll take a little bit of time. We still have to be patient with this approach because we’re trying to build a team.
The last thing we want is to top out as a middle of the road team. Our goal is to be a contender. You never know how high you can get when you get that contender status, but you want to be in that conversation. And we don’t want to be in the middle. So we’re going to do everything we can to build the best team possible and not just get excited and say the job’s done after we get one of two really good players.”
Yes, we still need to be patient. But I will say as someone who’s been a fan since the 1980s and who was writing about the team before they climbed to the mountain top in 2010 only to watch it torn apart by free agency and trades because of the salary cap, the idea that Davidson wants to build a roster that he can climb with but remains committed to the concept of sustained excellence carries a lot of value for me.
If the last thing he wants is to top out in the middle of the league, the second-to-last thing any of us wants is another exodus after winning a championship — or getting close (see: Toronto).
You can listen to the entire 20-minute interview here.
