According to Frank Seravalli of The Daily Faceoff, the Chicago Blackhawks have decided on the team’s 10th general manager. It’ll be Kyle Davidson shedding the interim tag, becoming the permanent GM (officially) on Tuesday.
Sources tell @DailyFaceoff the Chicago #Blackhawks will name Kyle Davidson the team’s 10th General Manager on Tuesday.
— Frank Seravalli (@frank_seravalli) February 28, 2022
Davidson was named the interim GM of the Chicago Blackhawks on October 26, when Stan Bowman resigned amid the release of the findings in the Jenner & Block Report into the sexual assault allegations by Kyle Beach. Davidson fired former head coach Jeremy Colliton on November 6 and named Derek King the interim head coach of the Chicago Blackhawks, taking early advantage of the power handed to him by the Blackhawks front office, treating the job as if it was his to lose.
Last week, Seravalli pegged Davidson as one of three finalists for the job along with Jeff Greenberg of the Chicago Cubs and Mathieu Darche of the Tampa Bay Lightning.
Davidson began his career with the Blackhawks as a Hockey Operations Intern in 2010 and was promoted to a full-time role as a Hockey Analytics/Video Analyst the next season. Davidson has rose through the ranks with the Blackhawks serving in multiple roles including, Hockey Administration Coordinator, Hockey Operations Manager, Senior Manager of Hockey Operations, Assistant to the General Manager, and of course most recently, Interim General Manager.
At least now we’ll have some closure on this process and Davidson can begin to focus on the rapidly approaching trade deadline, one that is particularly important for the Chicago Blackhawks, who have pieces to move. That’s at least one benefit of keeping the interim guy in charge, as we discussed earlier today.
Ultimately, this still feels like a decision that should have been saved for the offseason – not only so that Davidson could better focus on the coming trade deadline, but also so that all possible candidates could have been included. But we’re well beyond that. All things considered (i.e. the finalists reported to us), this feels like the best course of action. We’ll have more on this in the coming days.
UPDATES: Some reactions from the industry:
There will be many criticisms like Wysh's here, and they make sense on the surface. https://t.co/uD7m0d9tcA
I really do get the sense Davidson will bring just as much change and freshness to the organization as any outside candidate would've, though.
— Ben Pope (@BenPopeCST) February 28, 2022