With the dust mostly settled on this summer's NHL free agent market, the Chicago Blackhawks' offseason has been underwhelming, to say the least.
No, the Blackhawks aren't in win now mode. Yes, this year's free agent market was pretty thin from the start. Admittedly, Nikolaj Ehlers and Mitch Marner and may have been long shots. But still, for a team that has one of the best young centers in the game and fell criminally short of surrounding him with an even remotely competitive roster last season, one would think there might be some sense of urgency to shake things up this offseason.
Instead, the Blackhawks mostly sat back and watched as their rivals in a juggernaut Central Division aggressively did what they could to to try to gain an edge.
Blackhawks offseason inaction looks worse after Blues' aggressive push
Take the St. Louis Blues, for example. General manager Doug Armstrong didn't need to make a ton of moves this offseason, but the moves that he did make were significant and addressed clear organizational needs.
The Blues parted with forwards Zach Bolduc and Radek Faksa – both expendable, especially with the arrival of top prospect Jimmy Snuggerud – and added Nick Bjugstad and Pius Suter to shore up their center depth. They also acquired defenseman Logan Mailloux from the Montreal Canadiens as a young option on the blue line, a necessary upgrade considering Torey Krug will be out for at least this upcoming season.
The Blackhawks, meanwhile, have more than $22 million in cap space that they could have used to add proven scorers around Bedard or help fill the void left by Seth Jones on the blue line. Instead, they added Andre Burakovsky and Sam Lafferty to their forward group and re-signed Ryan Donato to a four-year contract.
The moves the Blackhawks did make weren't inherently bad; they just may not have been enough. Chicago does have an incredibly young roster and one of the league's deepest prospect pipelines, so the Blackhawks seem to be content with betting on their young core this upcoming season. Now, they will have to hope that bet pays off.
