The 2025-26 Blackhawks will be run by kids.
General manager Kyle Davidson has been making that fact — that the Hawks planned to open the dam on the youth takeover next season — clear for months, if the promising prospect-driven finish to 2024-25 didn’t make it obvious enough.
But now that Davidson did nothing of significance Tuesday during the first day of NHL free agency, that’s not only a likelihood but a reality. There’s no longer anything blocking the view from now to the opening of training camp in September.
“We’re heading into a new stage where…we’re leaving open spots in the NHL for some of these young players that we have drafted,” Davidson said. “We’ve seen some of them graduate to pro [hockey]. Now we’ll see some of them graduate into the NHL, or into the NHL full-time.
“There’s going to be a much larger contingent of young players, that could be here for a very long time, breaking camp with us this year. That’s really exciting. That’s a display of progress [versus] where we’ve been in the past. It’s a different look for this team.”
The Hawks’ only moves Tuesday consisted of a small trade for depth forward Sam Lafferty and an even smaller signing of deep-depth forward Dominic Toninato.
The speedy Lafferty, now 30, will return to the team where he enjoyed the most effective stretch of his NHL career in 2021-22 and 2022-23. He’s coming off a rough year in Buffalo, where he tallied seven points in 60 games while receiving less than 10 minutes of ice time per game, and has one year left on a contract with a $2 million salary-cap hit.
Davidson sent a 2026 sixth-round pick to the Sabres in exchange. Incredibly, it’s the fourth different time Davidson has executed a trade involving Lafferty, and the third time he has acquired him.
Toninato, 31, has 189 games of NHL experience but mostly played in the AHL during his last three seasons in the Jets organization. He signed a two-year contract with an $850,000 cap hit and will likely end up in Rockford.
“We didn’t want to put any players in front of some of the young guys that we do think are ready,” Davidson said. “Now, we have enough young players that there aren’t enough spots for all of them to play, so there will be battles there.”
Market analysis
Regarding Lafferty, Davidson called it a “reaction to the market” to acquire a known commodity with just one contract year left.
Free-agent depth forwards, on the other hand, landed absurdly lengthy deals left and right around the league Tuesday. Case in point: Tanner Jeannot, who seemed like a possible Hawks fit, signed with the Bruins for a whopping five years (with an equally whopping $3.4 million cap hit).
Ex-Hawks forward Philipp Kurashev, who received a meager one-year contract from the Sharks, was one of the few who did not.
The Kings provided a broader example of bad decision-making by signing five aging, overrated stopgaps — Corey Perry, Joel Armia, Brian Domoulin, Cody Ceci and Anton Forsberg — to contracts totaling a $15.25 million cap hit. It felt vaguely similar to the Hawks’ spree of signing veterans last summer, which worked out terribly.
By comparison, the Hawks’ inactive 2025 approach to July 1 was almost certainly smarter, albeit with less instant gratification. Davidson said they might make another couple of depth signings during the coming weeks, such as for a veteran defenseman and an AHL goaltender.
They’ve also initiated conversations about contract extensions with 2026 pending restricted free agents Connor Bedard, Frank Nazar and Spencer Knight, who all became extension-eligible Tuesday.
Bedard has repeatedly clarified he wants and plans to stay in Chicago long-term, but it would make sense for him to bet on himself having a breakout 2025-26 season before settling at a certain salary. Davidson implied Tuesday all three will likely do that, since the cap is skyrocketing at a conveniently profitable time for them.
Davidson claimed he continues to cautiously explore the trade market, too, following his trades with the Kraken (for Andre Burakovsky) and Sabres so far this summer.
Nonetheless, he took lots of heat on social media Tuesday from fans upset he still hasn’t gotten Bedard much help. His response is that such high-end players seldomly become available and that aggressive attempts to acquire those players rarely work out.
Lots of impatient Blackhawks fans making their voices heard on here today.
The organization hopes that once they see the prospects on NHL ice and (hopefully) playing well next season, they’ll understand the vision. Will be interesting to see how much that changes minds.
— Ben Pope (@BenPopeCST) July 1, 2025
The Hawks did seemingly get unlucky the Sabres wanted slightly more established, experienced young players in return for disgruntled forward JJ Peterka than the Hawks had to offer. Peterka, a 23-year-old coming off a 68-point season, would’ve been a stellar addition.
The Hawks have plenty of prospects with equal or more talent than defenseman Michael Kesselring and forward Josh Doan, the two players the Mammoth dealt in the winning offer for Peterka, but they’re all a few years younger than Kesselring, 25, and Doan, 23.
One shoe that hasn’t dropped is the about-to-be-rebuilding Penguins’ firesale. Bryan Rust, Rickard Rakell and Erik Karlsson’s names have swirled in rumors with no action yet. The Penguins are surely seeking the types of assets — picks and prospects — the Hawks have in spades, but neither Rust, 33, nor Rakell, 32, match the Hawks’ timeline age-wise whatsoever.
Roster breakdown
The Hawks’ defense, for now, is unchanged from the end of last season. It features one veteran — Connor Murphy — parenting a horde of early-20s guys: Alex Vlasic, Sam Rinzel, Kevin Korchinski, Artyom Levshunov, Wyatt Kaiser, Ethan Del Mastro, Louis Crevier and Nolan Allan. Not all of them will make the team, though.
The goaltending duo of Knight and current RFA Arvid Soderblom hasn’t changed, either, although the Hawks will have to figure out what to do with Laurent Brossoit if he’s healthy.
Up front, the puzzle is slightly more complicated. The Hawks have eight veterans: Ryan Donato, Teuvo Teravainen, Tyler Bertuzzi, Jason Dickinson, Ilya Mikheyev, Nick Foligno, Burakovsky and Lafferty. The last three aren’t totally guaranteed every-night playing time if they struggle, though.
Among the kids, Bedard and Nazar are obviously guaranteed top-six spots. Then there’s the Lukas Reichel conundrum to figure out, as he has been in trade rumors but will more likely than not return for one more back-against-the-wall season.
That leaves a handful of jobs for which Oliver Moore, Ryan Greene, Landon Slaggert, Colton Dach, Samuel Savoie, Nick Lardis and some other longshots will compete.
Lardis is the only NHL hopeful with zero pro experience so far, but he will enter camp riding the highest of highs. It will be fascinating to see how No. 3 pick Anton Frondell fares in camp, but he will likely head back to Sweden next season.
Gavin Hayes, Aidan Thompson and Martin Misiak will be in the mix but will likely start the season in Rockford. Other forward prospects like Roman Kantserov, Sacha Boisvert, Marek Vanacker and AJ Spellacy are at least a year away from joining that mix.