The conclusion of the Chicago Blackhawks’ 2025-2026 season marks the fourth year of a grand rebuild that has seen beloved stars like Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews sent away to build towards a new era of Blackhawks hockey. While the past few seasons have been a bleak contrast compared to the near dynasty that was the 2010’s Blackhawks, the rebuild is finally starting to take shape, and fans are seeing a way out of the depths of the bottom feeders of the NHL. While many fans have questioned the direction of General Manager Kyle Davidson’s grand scheme, slowly but surely the Blackhawks are being built back up to be a team that has the potential to bring the Stanley Cup back to Chicago.
The Blackhawks finished the 82 game season with a record of 29-39-14 and 72 points in the standings, which, although it was only good enough for 31st in league standings, was an 11 point improvement from last season. The season saw a transition from older vets who had been brought in at the beginning of the rebuild to help form some semblance of a team to the new guard of young players trying to prove they belong in the show. While still near the bottom of the league, the improvement in this team is light and day compared to the prior seasons of this daunting rebuild.
So who has already arrived? At the center of the whole rebuild is star forward Connor Bedard, who led the team in points with a career-high 75 in 69 games played. The 2023 1st overall pick and 2024 Rookie of the Year winner started the season off scoring 44 points in 31 games, which was among the best players in the league. Bedard’s huge step in the right direction came to a drastic halt, however, on December 12th after hurting his shoulder in a game against the St. Louis Blues. After returning in mid-January, Bedard continued to play great hockey and finished the season strong, although he was noticeably impacted by his time away. Bedard is expected to take another huge step next season, and will be a massive part of the future success the Blackhawks are being set up for.
Although Bedard is the largest part of this rebuild, other young stars have proved they will play an instrumental role in the Blackhawks future. Goaltender Spencer Knight, acquired from Florida in the Seth Jones trade last season, was a top 10 goaltender in the league recording a .902 SV%, three shutouts, and saved 10.9 goals above expected, doing so with one of the worst defenses in the league in front of him. Knight cemented himself as the future goaltender of this franchise and his stats will only continue to improve as the rest of the team does. Alongside Knight are forwards Frank Nazar, Nick Lardis, Oliver Moore, and Ryan Greene, and defensemen Artyom Levshunov and Sam Rinzel, all of which had up and down seasons but showed flashes of the major roles they have the capacity to play on this team in the future, laying down a solid foundation for the rebuild as a whole.
Fans spent this past season screaming about the lack of help Bedard has. While I agree Bedard’s current cast is not enough, help is coming through the pipeline. 2024 3rd overall pick Anton Frondell came over from Sweden near the end of the season and immediately showed that he will be a problem for the league, scoring 9 points in 12 games played. His early showing of greatness serves to be a great pair alongside Bedard on the top line. Waiting to join them next season is 2023 2nd round pick Roman Kantserov, who has exceeded expectations since being drafted and scored a league best 36 goals in the KHL, the second best hockey league in the world. On top of the many other prospects they have, the Blackhawks have the fourth overall pick in the 2026 NHL Draft, setting them up to pick up one of star forward prospects Caleb Malhotra or Ivar Stenberg, both of who have the talent to put the finishing touches on the rebuild.
Decisions need to be made this offseason. Who should Davidson select with the 4th overall pick? Should he make a big splash during free agency? Should he tap into the war chest of prospects and picks to go out and acquire a big time winger for Bedard? You can get as many draft picks as possible and draft a plethora of young players, and they can be great, but if they don’t mesh well together as a team, then none of it matters, and the rebuild was for nothing. Rebuilding is not a simple process, but it is the most effective way to get to the top of the NHL.
In the modern NHL, fully tearing a team down and rebuilding it from the ground up, while a prolonged and painful process, is the best way to become a top contender. Take teams like this season’s President Trophy (best team during the regular season) winning Colorado Avalanche, who were one of the worst teams throughout the 2010’s, stunk it up to get stars like Nathan MacKinnon and Cale Makar, and ended up rising to the very top, winning the Stanley Cup in 2022 and continuing to be one of the top teams in the league. This process can work, and if it works as I believe it will, the Blackhawks will reap the fruit of it for years to come. For fans, it can be hard to see the fruition of the rebuild be close when teams like the Montreal Canadiens and San Jose Sharks, who started their own rebuilds around the same time as the Blackhawks, have had quicker success. That is the unpredictability of sports itself. Davidson’s vision was never to speedrun the Blackhawks back to the top, but to slowly build towards sustained success that can last as long as the last core.
The Blackhawks season, although still one of the worst in the league, was a showing that we have already seen the worst out of this group, and things are already looking better. The success the Blackhawks saw throughout the 2010s was spurred by a near decade of darkness similar to what the Blackhawks are facing now. This period helped the Blackhawks acquire its stars like Kane, Toews, and Duncan Keith. Watching those three players tear up the NHL throughout the 2010s made me not only fall in love with the Blackhawks, but with hockey in general. To even come close to the legacy of the three Stanley Cups, the Blackhawks needed to strip down again, and strides are finally being made in the right direction to get there again in the near future. All it takes is patience, patience that will be worth it soon enough to get a taste of victory once again.
