Mostly quiet on Blackhawks’ free agency front
The Blackhawks may never have had a quieter first day of free agency.
Blackhawks general manager Kyle Davidson acquired Sam Lafferty — again — early in the day as a depth NHL forward piece and ended the day by signing Dominic Toninato, likely a key forward piece for the Rockford IceHogs.
That was it.
You add in Ryan Donato’s four-year extension and the acquisition of André Burakovsky, and it’s been a pretty uneventful offseason for the Blackhawks. It certainly didn’t come near to matching what we once thought it could. But to be fair, not many players who were possibilities to hit the market actually did, and the Blackhawks were also reassured of their youth rebuild process by the signings they made late season and the play they saw over the final month. By the end of the 2024-25 season, the Blackhawks seemed to be heading in this minimal action direction.
Davidson’s lack of moves was a sign that he’s ready to go further with his youth movement at the NHL level. You just project the defense, and it’s 32-year-old Connor Murphy with some combination of 19-year-old Artyom Levshunov, 21-year-olds Sam Rinzel and Kevin Korchinski, 22-year-olds Wyatt Kaiser, Ethan Del Mastro and Nolan Allan and 24-year-olds Alex Vlasic and Louis Crevier.
With the forwards, you could argue Davidson still hasn’t gone far enough with his youth by adding Lafferty and Burakovsky to go along with other veteran forwards Donato, Nick Foligno, Jason Dickinson, Tyler Bertuzzi, Ilya Mikheyev and Teuvo Teräväinen. That’s eight forwards aged 29 or older. But that is likely Davidson ensuring his young forwards are ready for the NHL. Connor Bedard and Frank Nazar are the locks in that young group. Landon Slaggert is probably there, too. The others are less certain. Colton Dach, Ryan Greene and Oliver Moore have a chance to be in the NHL. Nick Lardis may surprise people, but the Blackhawks think he may need time in Rockford. Samuel Savoie can’t be that far from his NHL recall either. It’s unclear where Lukas Reichel sits with the organization. Maybe he’s with the team come training camp, maybe he’s traded.
Regardless of how the Blackhawks break camp, they’ll probably get much younger as the season goes on, too. By the trade deadline, Murphy could be gone, and the defense could be entirely made of players under 25. Among the forwards, Foligno, Dickinson, Mikheyev and Lafferty are on expiring contracts. Just as Davidson moved players out last year to make room for younger players, he’ll likely do the same this season. Sacha Boisvert is probably on the path to sign out of college and make his NHL debut by the end of the 2025-26 season.
Davidson didn’t get that far into the details of his roster plan this season, but he explained why he’s gone about constructing his roster as he has and where exactly he believes the Blackhawks are in his rebuild plan.
“We’re heading into a new stage where we’re starting to see and we’re leaving open spots in the NHL for some of these young players that we have drafted and have developed to enter the NHL and start making up a larger or large, depending on the point of the year, portion of the roster,” Davidson said on Tuesday. “So I think we’re seeing them graduate. We’ve seen some of them graduate to pro now we’ll see some of them graduate into the NHL and into the NHL full time. That’s a meaningful step from not having any of them here or just a very small subset of our draft and prospects here over the last couple of years to where we’re starting to see them almost take over this team a little bit and take over that locker room to some extent.
“We still have a veteran-laden roster, but there’s going to be a much larger contingent of young players that could be here for a very long time, breaking camp with us this year. That’s really exciting. I think that’s a display of progress on where we’ve been in the past. It’s a different look for this team and I think it’s an eye to where we’re headed. It’s just an exciting step we’ve taken that we haven’t necessarily been able to reasonably expect prior to this season.”
Davidson provided some clarity about his goalie pool for the coming season. He has Spencer Knight and Drew Commesso signed, plans to re-sign Arvid Söderblom, would like to add another goalie for the AHL and was unsure where exactly Laurent Brossoit’s health stood for next season.
Davidson is expecting Knight and Söderblom to be the Blackhawks’ NHL goalies. Commesso will be the No. 1 in Rockford. If Brossoit is healthy, that would mean five signed goalies, but Davidson didn’t think that would be an issue.
“I think it’s again, if we have numbers, and hopefully LB’s (Brossoit) healthy and ready to go in training camp, we have a competition there and see where that goes,” Davidson said. “But I think we’ll still look to solidify things down in Rockford. A couple different ways you can go with it, whether you go more of a prospect type, or veteran with Drew, we’ll kind of figure that out. But I think Drew’s done enough and has enough body of work that we can trust him to carry the mail down there and really take the net and run with it and take on a really good workload to further his development.
“So I feel very confident and happy with our goaltending situation right now. Obviously Spencer coming in and continuing to understand our system, and under a new coaching staff, some new defensive systems that he’ll be playing within. So I think that’ll be great for him to continue to get comfortable here. Arvid, I think he can build on his season last year. And then I think Drew is trending in a really good direction. And then we’ll see how LB is. And then what else we do in Rockford over the next little while.”
Davidson confirmed he has had talks with Bedard about a contract extension. Bedard is set to become a restricted free agent after the 2025-26 season and became eligible to sign an extension as of Tuesday.
“Probably don’t want to get too far into it, but we are talking,” Davidson said. “So I think that’s an indicator of an openness to discuss. He made his thoughts very clear at the end of the season and subsequently in other interviews, he’s committed to Chicago and wants to be here long term and we obviously want him here long term, so there’s mutual agreement there. So, we’ll see. But if we’re able to get something done, that would be fantastic. But if we don’t, I think it’s probably more so out of the uncertainty around how the league and the system is going to be growing or impacted moving forward than anything player-team related.”
Will the Blackhawks be better next season? Maybe.
If they are, it’s all relative. The Blackhawks’ 61 points last season were better than their 52 points the season before, but they finished in 31st place both times. Even if the Blackhawks make a similar 10-point jump next season, they’re likely still in the 30th-32nd range.
Based on what teams have done so far and potential lineups, you’d have to think the Blackhawks and San Jose Sharks are projected to be at the bottom of the standings.
Which brings us to the name you’ll be hearing way too often for the next 11-plus months — Gavin McKenna.
McKenna is the projected No. 1 pick in the 2026 NHL Draft and will likely create Bedard-like hype from now until he plays in his first NHL game. In his 17-year-old season, he produced 41 goals and 88 assists in 56 regular-season games and another nine goals and 29 assists in 16 playoff games. He also had a points streak that ran 54 games.
Talking to The Athletic’s Corey Pronman about next year’s draft crop, he doesn’t think McKenna is as good as Bedard was in his draft year just yet, but that conversation could change over the next year. Whether or not he gets there, McKenna will probably be deemed another game-changing prospect for whichever team drafts him. For the record, The Athletic’s Scott Wheeler believes McKenna is the real deal.
Outside of McKenna, Pronman thought the draft could stack up similarly to this year, where there weren’t many sure things. Some of the players who could be in the discussion after McKenna are forwards Ivar Stenberg and Ryan Roobroeck and defensemen Keaton Verhoeff and Ryan Lin. The Blackhawks would probably target another top-six forward. Sternberg plays in the SHL, just as Anton Frondell does; that could be an area to watch next season. McKenna or Stenberg on top of the Blackhawks’ current forward pool would probably be ideal for their rebuild.
The Blackhawks’ 2025-26 roster will be young, but it’s the 2026-27 roster that could feel like Davidson goes all in with his young players
Their 2026-27 roster could look something like this (you’d add in McKenna if he were drafted):
Forwards
Frondell — Bedard — Donato
Lardis — Nazar — Bertuzzi
Moore — Kantserov — Teräväinen
Slaggert — Greene — Savoie
Burakovsky, Dach
Defensemen
Vlasic — Rinzel
Kaiser — Levshunov
Korchinski — Del Mastro
Allan, Crevier
Goalies
Knight
Söderblom
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