3 major mistakes Blackhawks general manager Kyle Davidson cannot make in the 2024 offseason

Panicked free agent signings will not help this rebuild

We discussed this a little in the previous slide, but signing big-name free agents to build around Connor Bedard won’t be a long-term answer. It may turn the Blackhawks into a halfway decent team in the short term and maybe even contenders in the mid-term, but it’s not worth throwing away the long term window. 

Instead of rolling with someone like Jake Guentzel just to throw a name out there and another player or two of his caliber who would make the team fun to watch, players like Guentzel would first need to build chemistry, and that could take time. Secondly, he will be 30 next season, which would give him a shorter span of seasons with Bedard. 

Davidson must find Bedard a teammate on the top line, similar to what we see with Leon Draisaitl and Connor McDavid in Edmonton or Mikko Rantanen and Nathan MacKinnon in Colorado. Despite Chicago’s major shortcomings this past season and likely in 2024-25, rolling with someone like that would pay dividends down the road instead of making a rushed and ill-informed unrestricted free agent signing. 

It’s all about finding potential stars and letting them grow together. Something we saw with MacKinnon and Rantanen, and McDavid and Draisaitl.