Blackhawks: Memo to fans about their direction feels weird

The Chicago Blackhawks gave a memo to the fans about their direction, but it feels weird.

The Chicago Blackhawks are in a weird spot. They still have a few of the legendary players on their roster that helped them win the Stanley Cup three times in six years. Jonathan Toews, Patrick Kane, Duncan Keith, and Brent Seabrook are all there at different levels of play. They let Corey Crawford and Brandon Saad go in free agency and via trade so things are already starting to fall apart.

Before today, we really didn’t know what direction the organization was going in. After the note that they sent out to their fans today online, you can sort of start assuming where they are going but nothing can be said for sure.

It seems like they are committed to their young players and that is good news. The issue with this statement is that they don’t really say whether or not they are in a full-blown rebuild or not. It claims they are going to rebuild their roster but what exactly does that mean? Are they going to shop guys like Toews and Kane? If not then they truly aren’t rebuilding in the ways that other teams do.

This note is very similar to the one that the New York Rangers put out a few years ago but it is much less transparent. New York ended up trading most of their core and started from scratch and now it is working out well for them. The Hawks seem like they might be willing to do the same but we can’t be sure.

They are going to develop guys like Alex DeBrincat, Kirby Dach, Ian Mitchell, and Adam Boqvist which is awesome but if they don’t do the rebuild right it won’t be as awesome. Hopefully, they are able to stay true to their word if they are actually committed to getting younger. They might be punting on another chance to win with their star players but taking a side is better than staying in the middle.

The idea of rebuilding, however, might not sit well with those formerly mentioned core guys. There is no way that a guy who is obsessed with winning as much as Toews is will enjoy taking part in a rebuild. It is certainly going to be interesting to see how they handle that type of pressure going forward.