Kyle Davidson has been the general manager in charge of three drafts for the Chicago Blackhawks and has done very well. We won’t see a lot of the results just yet as prospects take time to develop, but it is still enough to compare what he has done in the draft with the old regime.
After being officially eliminated from playoff contention already this season, the Blackhawks have missed the playoffs in five consecutive seasons and seven out of the last eight. While the team did sneak into the play-in games in 2019-20, they were last in the division at that time too and wouldn’t have qualified for the playoffs. So let’s compare Davidson’s three drafts to the five that came before him.
Davidson has drafted four players who have already played in the NHL including Kevin Korchinski, Frank Nazar, Connor Bedard, and Artyom Levshunov. The Blackhawks’ top pick in each of the drafts have already debuted, so that is a good sign.
There are still four first-round picks yet to debut as well. These players are Sam Rinzel, Oliver Moore, Sacha Boisvert, and Marek Vanacker. Three of them are in the NCAA, so it’s out of the Blackhawks’ hands for the time being.
Beyond that, there have been more than a few prospects who have already made some noise like Roman Kantserov and Nick Lardis for starters. There are plenty of promising prospects after that as well, but until they all debut in the NHL or never do, it’s hard to judge and compare against picks from the old regime who have had more than enough time to pan out or not.
There are 18 players from the previous five drafts (39 picks) that have at least played a game in the NHL and 10 who have played at least 50 games. The success of the draft picks are pretty good, but the quality isn’t all that great.
The Blackhawks have turned some players into regular NHLers like Henri Jokiharju, Adam Boqvist (questionable), Philipp Kurashev, Kirby Dach, Alex Vlasic, and Lukas Reichel, but the quality isn’t there at all.
Jokiharju is definitely an everyday NHLer and was playing a second or third pairing role for the Buffalo Sabres for a while. After that, Boqvist has jumped around teams and hasn’t fit anywhere, Kurashev possibly played himself out of a regular NHL job after this season, Dach is a solid player, but hasn’t come close to living up to third overall, Vlasic has been great and fortunately is still in Chicago, and Reichel both hasn’t played up to standards and hasn’t been given a good enough chance to since the beginning of 2023-24.
Former first rounder Nicolas Beaudin was a bust and a handful of young defensemen have been up and down between the NHL this season, such as Wyatt Kaiser, Louis Crevier, Nolan Allan, and Ethan Del Mastro.
I can commend the later picks that have hit or turned into someone who has potential from the old regime, but there’s a reason why the rebuild is taking longer than the ideal situation. Give the Blackhawks a few years with what Davidson has done to really build the prospect pool and develop young players and this will be a great team for a long time.
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