8 Chicago Blackhawks leaving in the new year

Turns out the standards were not raised in 2024 for the Chicago Blackhawks.

The Hawks will enter 2025 much like they entered 2024, at the top of the Tankathon standings. General manager Kyle Davidson was hoping the offseason additions of veteran players such as Tyler Bertuzzi and Teuvo Teräväinen would at least drop the team down the lottery standings.

Instead, the Hawks have had inconsistent efforts and briefly saw a regression from the team's superstar Connor Bedard. That all added up to Luke Richardson getting fired as head coach.

Now the Blackhawks will close out another season where they will likely finish with the best odds at a top three pick.

Not that there is anything wrong with that as the team clearly needs to add more players with tremendous upside during this rebuild.

Again, the hope was there would be enough improvement that Davidson could start making additions during the 2025 offseason to get the team back into the playoffs. Instead, making the playoffs still feels like years away.

That is one of the biggest dissapointments of 2024.

Some players have been disappointing at least during the end of 2024. It is one reason some of these guys listed below will not be with the team at some point in 2025.

Here are eight players who will be leaving the Blackhawks at some point in the new year...

Taylor Hall

A knee injury wiped practically all over his 2023-24 season.

This season, he was struggling to the point that he was a healthy scratch, which caused some problems for Richardson when he did not properly communicate why he was benching the former Hart Trophy winner.

Hall has played better since being scratched and has started to settle in nicely as a linemate alongside Bedard.

He is set to be a free agent after the season and is not in the team's long-term plans. It makes more sense to trade him at the deadline to get accumulate more draft picks or possibly a prospect that will be on the next great Blackhawks team.