A short airing of grievances against Kyle Davidson and the Blackhawks

Oh, the Blackhawks deserve an ‘airing of grievances’ perhaps more than any other hockey team next to a certain division rival. Overall, it’s been such a bad season for the Hawks that fans are once again talking about landing the top pick, something that has become a perennial thing if you’ve been following this team recently. 

So, what’s gone wrong with the Blackhawks this year and why is general manager Kyle Davidson deserving of the blame? Well, let’s outline a few ways he’s mismanaged this team since the league year kicked off this past summer. 

Grievance No. 1: Flubbing Connor Bedard’s growth

While it looks like Connor Bedard is working his way out of that seemingly endless slump, we still shouldn’t be having a conversation about whether it’s Macklin Celebrini and not Bedard of who’s the true generational talent. 

Yet, here we are, wondering if the Hawks ended up with the ‘lesser of the two talents.’ But, in all honesty, Bedard and Celebrini should both be future faces of the league. The issue here is that Kyle Davidson looked as though he tried to force-feed Bedard to spur his growth, and that just hasn’t worked through two and a half months of hockey. 

Grievance No. 2: Trying to ‘buy’ success

This one is an extension of Grievance No. 1, as it involved signing a horde of free agents on Day 1 of NHL Free Agency. Yeah, it may’ve been a good idea if Kyle Davidson were playing an EA NHL video game or something, but this isn’t always the best and brightest way to go in real life. 

And yeah, I’ll admit that Davidson had me fooled back in July. Even if this strategy opposes my own philosophy of how to build long-term success, I was glad to see Teuvo Teravainen and Tyler Bertuzzi in town, along with Alec Martinez, Laurent Brossoit, and Patrick Maroon, thinking they’d turn the Hawks into at least a middle-of-the-pack team.  

Davidson’s plan has instead tanked this team, but if it makes him feel any better, at least he’s not the only general manager in the Central Division that messed this up. He only needs to look toward his team’s division rivals, the Nashville Predators.  

Grievance No. 3: Not letting Luke Richardson go earlier

It felt like a weight lifted off everyone’s shoulders in the Windy City when Davidson finally ended the Luke Richardson Experiment. But did it have to take him so long? Clearly, the Hawks are a better team under Anders Sorensen, and even if we wouldn’t have known this unless Davidson handed Richardson his walking papers, it was, overall, a bad fit. 

The second the Hawks looked like they were regressing was when Davidson should have made the change. Yeah, it’s better that he was late to the party as opposed to never attending, but still, everyone in the Windy City knew Richardson had to go.