Kirby Dach’s hot start to the season for the Montreal Canadiens didn’t help win over fans about the Blackhawks’ rebuilding plan.
You bet they noticed Dylan Strome playing with Alex Ovechkin on the Washington Capitals. That Dominik Kubalik, now with the Detroit Red Wings, is on pace to score 25-plus goals again or Brandon Hagel playing significant minutes for the Tampa Bay Lightning.
And don’t even bother mentioning trading away Alex DeBrincat to the Ottawa Senators. There are some Blackhawks fans who may never forgive general manager Kyle Davidson for doing that.
But what if he didn’t? What if the Blackhawks didn’t tear it all down so quickly and decided to run it back with largely last season’s team? That’d mean re-signing Kubalik and Strome, and keeping DeBrincat, Dach and Hagel, among others. How would have that team fared?
Well, there’s a way we can sort of figure that out. Using The Athletic‘s GSVA model, we can create a lineup of what the Blackhawks would have looked like if they hadn’t made such drastic moves, calculate their total GSVA and compare that to the rest of the league. Of course, it’s not an exact science. For example, Patrick Kane has a 1.1 GSVA right now. Going into the season, based on his last three years (weighed by recency and adjusted for age), he was projected to be worth 2.7 wins. It’s clearly dipped so far this season, but probably would have been either on point with projections or even higher if he was back playing with DeBrincat and Strome. Otherwise, for the most part, it shouldn’t be that far off. Most of the players who left the Blackhawks are playing in key roles for their respective teams.
Let’s start with this season’s Blackhawks team:
The Blackhawks have a total GSVA of 0.7, which is last in the league, so you can see the model does work.
And here, we go a step further and show you where this current Blackhawks team ranks by position, by line, pairing and so on. The best ranking they have with this roster is with their right-wing depth and fourth line. And that ‘best’ is only 26th in the league. Elsewhere, they fall between 28th and 32nd in the league. The only team to have worse all-around rankings, really, is Anaheim.
Now, let’s get to the fun part. This is what the Blackhawks would have looked like if Davidson hadn’t dismantled the roster.
The lines would have likely been DeBrincat-Strome-Kane, Kubalik-Jonathan Toews-Hagel, Tyler Johnson-Dach-Philipp Kurashev and Sam Lafferty-Jujhar Khaira-MacKenzie Entwistle.
The defenseman pairings would have likely been Jake McCabe–Seth Jones, Riley Stillman–Connor Murphy and Caleb Jones–Erik Gustafsson. Finally, with the goalies, we have them bringing back Kevin Lankinen and Collin Delia, who are both in the NHL right now.
And here is what that team looks like in the model:
For our purposes, the values pictured are all where players stand right now — that’s Dach’s current GSVA with Montreal and Kane’s with Chicago. It’s always possible a player would have over- or under-performed had they remained in Chicago. Would Gustafsson have played so well with the Blackhawks, like he is with the Capitals? Probably not. But maybe DeBrincat wouldn’t have needed that adjustment period with Ottawa, and would be picking up where he left off last year.
The Blackhawks would definitely have a much better forward group, but probably by as much as you’d think. The Blackhawks went from having the 30th forward group on the current team to just the 27th with this team. The defense improves from 30 to 29. The goalies actually get worse and go from 31 to 32.
In some respects, center and left-wing depth, for example, Chicago rises in the standings. Same with the third pair, thanks to Gustafsson’s presence. That’s actually their ‘best’ ranking in the league, at 18th. Still, this isn’t contender caliber — not near it. In every single category, the Blackhawks fall to the bottom half of the league, and still have some rankings worse than 28th. But they probably wouldn’t be bad enough to really compete for worst in the league and have the best odds of adding Connor Bedard.
When you add up the GSVA, this team would be at a collective value of 8.0, which would put them 28th in the league. They finished in 27th last season. By trading or not re-signing DeBrincat, Dach, Gustafsson, Hagel, Kubalik and Stillman, the Blackhawks gave up 4.76 additional wins, based on the model.
This was ultimately Davidson’s fear if he brought back the same group. He worried the Blackhawks wouldn’t be good enough to make the playoffs, but also not bad enough to be in the running for a top-three draft pick. You can argue he should have kept DeBrincat or whoever else, or gotten more back for those assets that would help speed up their turnaround. But if the goal was to tank and potentially draft Bedard, Davidson seemed to make the right choice.
(Photo of Patrick Kane, Alex DeBrincat, Dylan Strome: David Banks / USA Today)
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