BUFFALO, N.Y. — This NHL combine week has been different in a few ways for Blackhawks general manager Kyle Davidson.
For one thing, there are more prospects in play for the Hawks’ first draft pick, No. 3 overall. From an outside perspective, forwards Porter Martone, Anton Frondell, Caleb Desnoyers and James Hagens seem squarely within the range of possibilities.
Davidson said Thursday — after a long day of interviewing prospects — that the Hawks’ internal rankings aren’t finalized yet, whereas they were at this point in 2023 and 2024. The scouting staff will reconvene in a couple of weeks (before the decentralized draft June 27-28) to decide if it wants to make any tweaks, based on what the Hawks learned at the combine.
‘‘It’s a very big decision, so I want to make sure I’ve got a full view of where I want to go with it, with the different scenarios played out,’’ Davidson said.
It’s also not guaranteed that the Islanders and Sharks, who hold the top two picks, will select the two prospects considered the best from an outside perspective: defenseman Matthew Schaefer and forward Michael Misa. That’s why various scenarios must be played out. Davidson has mentioned several times that public rankings often differ significantly from each team’s internal rankings.
Misa raised some eyebrows Thursday when he told Sharks reporter Sheng Peng he had dinners this week with the Islanders, Sharks, newly named Utah Mammoth and Predators — the other four teams holding top-five picks — but not the Hawks.
Davidson clarified the Hawks didn’t take any prospects out to dinner. They think they know everyone well enough already from throughout-the-season conversations and during-the-day interviews this week. They interviewed just short of 60 prospects.
He also mentioned a lack of privacy when dining at the few high-end restaurants in Buffalo, so perhaps the Hawks didn’t want to give away any hints about their preferences. With Connor Bedard two years ago, they snuck through the back door of a restaurant into a private room.
People around the league have speculated Martone might not interest the Hawks because his subpar skating and inconsistent play don’t fit their recent track record of focusing on elite skaters with high work ethic. But Davidson suggested he might diversify what he’s looking for this year.
‘‘We do have a lot of players that are similar in their strengths,’’ he said. ‘‘In some respects, I think that’s how you build identity. In others, you can bring in players — if you’ve got enough [already] — that it’s not going to take away from the core strength of your team. So you can bring players in that have a different skill set, that are more of a complementary piece. That’s definitely something we’re considering.’’
Davidson also emphasized the Hawks definitively view Bedard and Frank Nazar as NHL centers — they’re not considering moving one to the wing — so a prospect’s likelihood of being able to play center in the future doesn’t matter much to them. That might most affect Desnoyers, who is considered the truest center of the bunch.
And then there’s the possibility of a trade, even though Davidson has seen the NHL’s skyrocketing salary cap dampen leaguewide trade discussions so far. In addition to No. 3, the Hawks also have the No. 25 pick, two second-round picks and an early third-round pick.
They’ve reached the point of their rebuild where packaging several picks to get a higher pick — or a young NHL player — appeals to them. Their prospect pool is enormous, after all, and making it substantially bigger only would complicate things. They’re certainly not interested in trading down.
But trading up would make sense, either to get Misa — as difficult as that would be — or to move from No. 25 into the teens.
“The last couple of drafts, we’ve made a ton of picks and kept them all for the most part, unless we were trying to be aggressive and move up for certain players,” Davidson said. “That sort of aggressiveness will likely continue if there’s someone…we don’t want to miss out on.”
Market analysis
The salary cap, which is set to increase by $7.5 million to $95.5 million next season (and by even greater amounts the following two summers), has reduced the number of notable players on the trade market around the league. Many of Davidson’s peer GMs seem more “comfortable” now.
“There’s a lot of teams that have access to space and money that wasn’t in the system before,” he said. “That’s either going to probably hold players in their current place, or create new teams that are in the mix on a few players that do become available. So it creates more competition for a smaller number of players.”
It also means the prices for this summer’s average-at-best class of free agents will be through the roof, with players likely getting millions more than they previously would have simply because so many GMs have so much money to spend. The Avalanche’s Wednesday extension of veteran Brock Nelson at a $7.5 million cap hit provided an early example of that.
Davidson sounded especially cautious and skeptical about the free-agent market, believing it might not make sense for the Hawks — at this point in their rebuild — to throw out recklessly large contracts to players in their late 20s or early 30s. Reading between the lines, it doesn’t sound like they’ll dive deeply into the Mitch Marner sweepstakes.
Trading picks or prospects for young players already under contract appeals to Davidson more, but he cautioned — as usual — that trade partners aren’t easy to find. Indeed, there aren’t many teams currently entering rebuilds and looking to auction off guys like the Hawks did three years ago.
“It’s something that we can explore, and we’ve got the ammo to access [it] if something comes available,” he said. “So we’re open to it, but it’s really hard. Everyone wants good players, and then when they get them, they don’t want to give them up. That’s why a lot of these players are either acquired via the draft, or using assets that they’ve gotten from the draft or draft capital. Everything stems back to the draft.”
One could argue the cap surge is happening at an unfortunate time for the Hawks, neutralizing what could’ve been a key advantage for them this summer — cap space — by giving it out to almost every team. Davidson pushed back against that, however, asserting they still have their key advantage: their prospect pool.
He said it would’ve worried him more if this was the landscape last season, when the Hawks needed to fill a lot of roster holes via trades and free agency. This summer, they’re targeting quality over quantity, since most of next season’s roster will be comprised of prospects.
“I don’t think we have a number of holes that we need to fill this year,” he said. “Because there’s some young players that have graduated into pro…that are ready to show what they can do, and ready to earn that spot and play at the NHL level.
“What we ended [last season] with — and what we’ll probably start with [next season] — is a totally different team than we played 85% of last season. There is a lot of new that’s going to be there.”
The Hawks are talking “back and forth” with pending free agent Ryan Donato, Davidson said, and they’re still “hopeful” they can reach an agreement on a new contract.