Chicago Blackhawks have lost three Brandon Saad trades
The Chicago Blackhawks need to stop making trades involving Brandon Saad.
The Chicago Blackhawks have had the fortune of finding themselves some very good players over the past two decades. Brandon Saad is one of those players for them. He is a multiple-time Stanley Cup champion with the Hawks and was a huge part of it both times. You need young players to come up and develop well in order to sustain success and Saad was just that for the Hawks. For whatever reason, however, the Hawks have made a trade involving him three times and it has been bad all three times.
To Columbus from Chicago
The Chicago Blackhawks traded him when he was due for a pay raise after winning the Stanley Cup in 2015. Less than three weeks after raising his second career Cup, Saad was headed to the Columbus Blue Jackets in exchange for Artem Anisimov, Jeremy Morin, Marko Dano, and Corey Tropp. It is a brutal trade for the Hawks because the only one of those guys who was pretty good for the Hawks was Anisimov.
Anisimov was a good second-line center behind Jonathan Toews but there is nothing he did that Saad couldn’t do on the wing better. Anisimov was also not much cheaper than Saad in the end either which makes it even worse. They would have needed to find a different second-line center besides Anisimov to replace Brad Richards if they didn’t trade Saad but it could have been done.
From Columbus back to Chicago
This was the Brandon Saad trade that set the Blackhawks back for half a decade and possibly more. They re-acquired Saad from the Blue Jackets which was nice to see. The only problem was that they sent away Artemi Panarin as part of a deal that will go down as one of the worst trades in the history of the organization.
Panarin is a superstar and one of the best players in the world. He was nominated for the Hart Trophy in 2019-20 because of how good he was. This is a winger that had 95 points in 2019-20 which is a whole 65 more points than Saad’s total of 33. Saad is a nice goal-scoring winger but Panarin is a superstar.
Chicago to Colorado
The Chicago Blackhawks traded away Brandon Saad again last week when they sent him (and Dennis Gilbert) to the Colorado Avalanche for Nikita Zadorov and Anton Lindholm. The key piece coming back to Chicago is Zadorov who is a defenseman. Zadorov is a pretty good middle to bottom pair guy who is tough to play against.
It isn’t one that makes the Hawks much better or worse but when you think about giving up Panarin to get Saad, this trade looks awful for Chicago. They let Corey Crawford go but they traded one of their best wingers away to get defensive help when they have three goalies who aren’t very good. This trade was a major sign that Stan Bowman has absolutely no plan and just seems to be making moves for the sake of making moves.
Colorado hit a home run with this addition and now they could legit go win the Cup. Saad is going to get a chance to play with guys like Nathan Mackinnon, Gabriel Landeskog, Mikko Rantanen, and Cale Makar at different points so he should be able to flourish, lucky him.
Hot. The Chicago Blackhawks could learn a thing or two from the New York Rangers. light
Conclusion
Brandon Saad is a great player that fans will miss. He was excellent at times and really put his heart and soul out there trying to win games. He is certainly going to be good in Colorado while the Hawks continue to go nowhere. Hopefully, they never make a trade involving Saad ever again because they lose every time.