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Rozner: Where are Chicago Blackhawks going and when will they arrive?

It made sense for the Blackhawks to trade a goaltender Monday.

In fact, it would have made sense if they had traded two of them, since both will be unrestricted free agents after the season.

With the Hawks' season over, we'll assume both were shopped but that there was limited interest in Corey Crawford, a two-time Stanley Cup-winning goaltender who has found his game again.

Apparently, given his injury history, there wasn't a market for him among the 10 teams to which he could be traded.

Robin Lehner was the Hawks' best player this season - despite some recent struggles - and so the asking price was high, and getting a second-round pick and a young defenseman doesn't feel like enough given the opportunity to hold up teams in desperate need of a goaltender.

"We had a lot of conversations over the last several days," Hawks GM Stan Bowman said Monday evening. "It was a busy stretch, but I don't think it's fair to say what teams had interest and what teams didn't."

If the Hawks tried to hold someone up for a first-rounder and the bottom fell out of the market, well, that's poker, but for a team trying to win it all in Vegas, Lehner was cheap at twice the price.

Malcolm Subban, meanwhile, has never once looked like the answer to any question, so the Hawks could re-sign either Crawford or Lehner as a free agent after the season, if - in the case of Crawford - he still wants to play, and if - in the case of Lehner - he wants to return to a team that's rebuilding.

Lehner is obviously the choice, though he will be expensive. Otherwise, it's the elevation of AHL goalies Kevin Lankinen, Collin Delia or Matt Tomkins, or an option to be determined.

"Heading into the summer, we do have some decisions to make," Bowman said. "But it's a little earlier to be handicapping the goaltending situation."

Call it whatever you want. The Hawks have refused to call it a rebuild, but that's what they've been doing the last two summers, trying to get younger and find pieces to put around Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane before they join AARP.

This will be the third year in a row that the Hawks haven't made the playoffs, though you give them a pass on the first one considering they were coming off a first-place finish in the West and a first-round sweep at the hands of the Preds.

No one forecast the 2018 finish, so you toss that.

But by the time they fired Joel Quenneville 15 games into the 2018-19 season, it was clear what was happening.

The Hawks were rebuilding.

They made a run to get close to a playoff spot last season for about a month, and the same happened this season as they made it interesting for a while.

But too many injuries prevented a serious run at the postseason, and even then it's unlikely they would have made a deep charge had they got in, not with the current depth - especially on defense.

Thus, selling at the deadline and the trading of Lehner and Erik Gustafsson.

"Long term, we're in a better position with additional assets," Bowman said. "We added a talented young defenseman in Slava Demin with a lot of upside, and we added two drafts picks, a second and a third.

"No question we're better off down the road. Obviously, you trade players and it hurts you in the present."

This trade deadline was really the beginning of the off-season, where again the Hawks have to decide if this is a team that can go deep next season.

It's not enough to have a team that can make the playoffs. You've got to have the size and depth to go far in the postseason, or else what's the point of the exercise?

Monday was about picks and prospects, and the citywide anger was at least a little humorous when you consider most were calling for Gustafsson's head earlier this season and few understood spending money on Lehner last summer.

Now they're Hall of Famers and the Hawks should have done better in deals, which - regardless - is probably a fair assessment.

But what happened at the deadline, all hysterics aside, isn't that big a deal.

The much more important points - and bigger questions - are about where the Hawks are going, when they intend to get there and whether they'll be closer to winning a Stanley Cup in September than they were last September.

Rebuilds are painful. That's why your coffee tastes so bad in the morning.

And you drink more beer at the games.

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