Why Stan Bowman thinks Blackhawks could be a contender in near future

According to hockeyreference.com, the odds of the Blackhawks qualifying for the Stanley Cup playoffs were 1.5 percent before Thursday's games.

It's an enormous mountain to climb. A seemingly impossible task.

Some might say it would take a miracle.

Just don't tell that to general manager Stan Bowman, who is not giving up on the 2018-19 campaign just yet.

“We've got a lot of ground to make up. But we're not throwing in the towel,” Bowman said before the Hawks defeated Minnesota 5-2 at the United Center on Thursday.

Patrick Kane had a hat trick, Brandon Saad scored 2 goals, Jonathan Toews and Erik Gustafsson had 2 assists each and Collin Delia made 46 saves.

The Hawks improved to 5-2-1 over their last eight games.

Even with the victory over the Wild, the Hawks (14-20-6) probably have to win 28-30 of their final 42 games to keep playing past April 6.

In all likelihood, that's not going to happen and Bowman will eventually have to decide just how much he wants to tweak the roster as the trade deadline approaches.

In the short term, though, he's just happy with how the Hawks have played over the last few weeks.

“We're starting to see (us) play more as a team,” Bowman said. “Once that happens, you have a good chance at results. You're still playing good opponents every night, so even if you do something well it doesn't mean you're going to win.

“But we're putting ourselves in position where we can win these games.”

That's been the case lately as the Hawks have defeated Pittsburgh, Nashville, Dallas, Colorado and Minnesota over the last two weeks. They've been far from perfect over that time, but have certainly looked better than the first 17 games under Jeremy Colliton when they went 3-12-2 while trying to change their on-ice tendencies.

Said Bowman: “I was joking with Jeremy early on: If we could just tell the NHL, ‘We're going to pause for three weeks. We're going to go have a little camp. And then we'll kind of resume our season and we'll be ready.'

“We couldn't do that, right? So we had all these games coming night after night. We're trying to ingrain some new habits.”

Slowly, but surely, that seems to be happening.

Although the Hawks are mired near the bottom of the Western Conference, Bowman steadfastly believes they aren't that far away from becoming a contender in the near future.

One key will be melding an aging core with talented players like Alex DeBrincat, Dylan Strome and Erik Gustafsson, as well as up-and-coming D-men like Henri Jokiharju, Adam Boqvist and Nicolas Beaudin.

Goaltending could be another issue as it's not known if — or when — Corey Crawford will return from his latest concussion.

Of course, help could be on the way at numerous positions next July when free agency rolls around. Even if Bowman doesn't make a single move between now and then — something that seems very unlikely — he'll easily be able to spend more freely than at any time during his tenure as GM.

That means Bowman could bring in a big name like Artemi Panarin, Mark Stone or Matt Duchene. Or he may opt to sign a couple of midrange free agents who would provide more depth.

I asked him if a year or two from now, he expects to look back and say, “Those were some tough times. But it was necessary to build a consistent winner again.”

“That's the whole reason you do this,” Bowman said. “You have hopes that your moves are going to take your franchise in the direction of being an elite team. That's what we want to get back to.

“We don't think we're light years away from that. But at the same time, there's a process that has to happen. Everyone would love to accelerate that process. Sometimes you can't accelerate everything.

“You just have to let things play out and that's sort of where we're at.”