The Blackhawks’ rebuild has been a long and painful process, but its architect — general manager Kyle Davidson — continues to receive the full support of Hawks chairman and owner Danny Wirtz.
Wirtz expressed strong optimism in the Hawks’ on- and off-ice future during an interview Monday with the Sun-Times.
‘‘Everything Kyle set out to do, he continues to deliver on,’’ Wirtz said. ‘‘All of that is predicated on ultimately building a winning team, by all means. But I can only evaluate everything he’s done, and he continues to back up his choices.
‘‘He has built an incredibly exciting pipeline of talent that is coming to the surface now, and we have a lot more even to look forward to. From that standpoint, I’m very pleased with Kyle. He has built a great internal organization to support the development of our young players. He has built a great coaching staff this season, with the new coaches in place. And he has built a [good] culture within hockey operations.’’
The four-year anniversary of Davidson’s promotion to GM is coming up, and the Hawks’ cumulative record under him isn’t pretty: 107-187-35 entering play Monday.
Much of that losing was by design, however, and the prospects selected with the countless high draft picks are finally reaching the NHL. Wirtz said he’s glad the Hawks’ fan base now can witness those players’ development with their own eyes, which should help them understand better the purpose of all of the pain.
The prospects aren’t guaranteed, of course, to transform the Hawks into contenders again. Wirtz admitted he’s ‘‘as anxious as anyone to see these prospects start to pop.’’ But his belief they eventually will hasn’t wavered.
‘‘If we weren’t having some success and seeing some of these players start to break through, I would be more concerned,’’ Wirtz said. ‘‘But the folks we’re seeing, it’s really exciting. There’s nothing better than seeing a young player start to figure it out in the league and start to find that confidence.’’
And how long will Wirtz’s belief last? Is there a deadline — or even a timeline — for the Hawks’ breakthrough in his head?
‘‘My expectations are based around improvement,’’ he said. ‘‘We need to see positive improvement, moving in the right direction. That is, of course, on a standings level, but the standings are a result of our young players developing into the kinds of players that we know they can be. If you focus on those as the inputs, I believe the outputs — of increasing our standing — will flow from there.’’
Salary-cap effect
The NHL’s skyrocketing salary cap will influence the process, and it arguably has hurt the Hawks in the short term. They had been positioned as one of relatively few teams with cap flexibility; now every team has cap space to burn.
That squashed the trade and free-agent markets this past offseason because teams had no need to jettison existing big contracts and plenty of space to re-sign pending free agents to big new deals. That prevented the Hawks from acquiring any established stars.
In the long run, however, the cap — estimated to reach $113.5 million in 2027-28 and continue rising from there — could benefit wealthier, bigger-market teams willing to continue spending all the way to the cap. That includes the Hawks.
‘‘We will spend appropriately — where it makes sense — for us to go and win Stanley Cups,’’ Wirtz said. ‘‘That’s been a hallmark of us during the salary-cap era. We’re able to [plan ahead for] it now, and we’re fortunate we also have a really good business foundation here in Chicago to support that investment.
‘‘From a cap-management standpoint . . . it gives Kyle a little [more] visibility as to how he needs to plan and grow, knowing there’s going to be growing salaries across the board as he goes forward. He’s making very smart, deliberate choices.’’
There will be pressure on the Hawks’ business department to keep revenue growth at a rate sufficient to support the additional spending on players, but Wirtz said the financial state of the franchise is ‘‘very solid’’ at the moment.
‘‘Given team performance, [we’ve done] exceptionally well, considering,’’ he said. ‘‘[Over] the last couple of years, rebuilding so many aspects of the business and getting our ticketing and partnerships in line . . . allowed us to weather the storms pretty well.
‘‘Of course, things like TV deals were unplanned hits to our financial picture. But I think we’re in a really good spot. As team performance increases, our business model is very well-suited to benefit from that.’’
CHSN’s next steps
That aforementioned TV deal was the focal point of the Sun-Times’ interview with Wirtz last October. The Hawks went on to endure an entire season of extremely low viewership on Chicago Sports Network before it finally reached a carriage agreement with Comcast this past summer.
‘‘We knew that Comcast was a very important piece for Blackhawks fans, who over-index as Comcast subscribers,’’ Wirtz said. ‘‘It was important that we found a deal that was fair and made it work. . . . I think that really opened up the door for more of our fans to watch our games this season.’’
The Hawks’ local-TV viewership dropped 78% last season, according to Sports Business Journal. In their first two CHSN games this season, the viewership has been about three times higher than last season, Wirtz said.
CHSN has also seen encouraging sign-up numbers for its direct-to-consumer app. However, the Comcast deal required them to stop broadcasting over-the-air in Chicago and some other markets, which Wirtz described as a difficult but necessary compromise.
Wirtz insisted he has no regrets about the Hawks’ decision to commit to CHSN in 2024, when their previous TV contract with now-defunct NBC Sports Chicago expired.
‘‘Look, we’ve been in business with the Bulls and White Sox for decades, working together,’’ Wirtz said. ‘‘The power of all three teams and brands is really valuable. The timing is just at a time when so many things are in flux in the media world and so many things are changing.
‘‘Unfortunately, the status quo is not going to be an option. So it was a timing issue with the way both consumers and fans are interacting with sports and those packages, as well as [with] the media companies themselves. At the end of the day, we believe in the value of our content across all three teams, and I think we’re in a better spot this year than we were last year.’’