The Blackhawks should now target Alex DeBrincat in a trade

The Chicago Blackhawks traded Alex DeBrincat to the Ottawa Senators last summer. In return for him, they landed multiple draft picks.

One of those picks was the seventh overall selection in the 2023 NHL Draft which they used on Kevin Korchinski. Obviously, that was a great pick for them.

DeBrincat had a pretty good year in Ottawa but he wasn’t the 40-goal scoring machine that we’ve come to know from him. Well, sometimes that happens in year one with a new team.

Now, DeBrincat is set to hit arbitration but he could very well be traded this summer too. The Chicago Blackhawks might not be one of his preferred destinations anymore but you never know what he can be convinced to do.

The Chicago Blackhawks and Alex DeBrincat make a lot of sense together.

He had a lot of success playing for Chicago despite it being a very bad team for most of his tenure in town. Now, he’d have the chance to play with a generational talent like Connor Bedard.

You thought he was good with Patrick Kane? Imagine if he was with Bedard who is an elite goal scorer in addition to a playmaker. DeBrincat would benefit from all of Bedard’s skills.

What would it take to land DeBrincat in a trade back? Well, there are a lot of teams who would want a guy whose floor is 27 goals so the competition is there.

However, he probably won’t come close to costing what the Blackhawks got for him with a year left on his deal. There is no top-ten pick being given up in a deal like this.

The Hawks would have to give up something good but that doesn’t mean it would be a trade like the one from a year ago. They do have four second-round picks to work with this year.

Ottawa projects to be a good team with or without him so they are going to get this done. If they do, the price is right, and he wants to come back,  the Hawks should be all in on it.

Normally, going for former players on your team is a bad idea but this is the type of exception to that rule.