Kyle Davidson Isn't Trying

What is a plan, really?

Thanks to the Chicago Cubs of 2016, this city seems to have infinite patience for any team that regularly uses the word "rebuild." White Sox fans clamored for it, got one, and are now at the beginning of another one for their troubles. Bears fans were happy to go through the 2022 season, because it felt like a rebuild and ended with the #1 pick. Bulls fans...well, who knows anymore. Even Cubs fans were happy to go through a miniature version of one again from 2021 until now.

This is what the Hawks, Kyle Davidson, and Danny Wirtz (attentively or not) have been playing on. There's also a dash of hinting toward the Hawks Cup run as a rebuild, because calling on their recent history is apparently a bottomless well and the fanbase still thinks it was only yesterday. Perhaps when a team waits 49 years for one Cup, 11 years (as it will be come next June) just seems like a mere fart in the wind.

As I keep screaming until my lungs bleed, hockey isn't baseball, and the Hawks 2010 team wasn't cobbled together through a rebuild. At least not a traditional one, considering it spanned three GMs. It was one of the greatest accidents in recents sports history.

Trying to recreate an accident isn't a plan.

It's become apparent this week just how little Davidson is interested in moving the boulder up the hill at all. That's not to say that either of Trevor Zegras or J.J. Peterka are franchise-turners. But they're certainly spicier than relieving Seattle of their Andre Burakovsky-shaped salary problem. The fact that Zegras or Peterka cost next to nothing is all the more infuriating.

Zegras certainly is still a question in a lot of areas. But what could pay off more? Bringing in Zegras for a season, planting him on Bedard's wing, and seeing if he can't become a real playmaking force? Or just watching Burakovsky wait around to get hurt for 35 games? The Hawks have no one, and it's not even really close, who creates chances at the rate Zegras does. Bedard has never had one on his wing, and the Hawks can't unlock what Bedard could be without a winger on his wavelength. It's not Ryan Donato skating in a straight line and hoping the puck finds him before he hits the end-boards.

Even if the Hawks wanted to pump his numbers for 50 games by giving him unfettered top line/PP1 time, and then move him along at the deadline, wouldn't that be better use of time and money than letting Burakovsky do whatever he's going to do here for two years? It's certainly not like the latter is a long-term answer.

To Peterka, again a flawed player, but players tend to be at 23. If the Hawks keep looking for the finished article, they're not going to find it. Isn't that what their self-vaunted development and coaching is supposed to combat?

Peterka has two 25+ goal seasons before turning 24. Who on the Hawks has that? No one. Not even Bedard, yet. Let you in on a secret, Bedard hasn't gotten there once, yet. Nazar would have to eclipse that mark in the next two to beat it. Peterka put up 68 points last year on a go-nowhere team at 23. This is a 75-point player waiting to be unleashed, if not 80+.

And he cost nothing last night for Utah to acquire, as Utah is actually trying to be something. Michael Kesselring and the garbage Doan son. Doan is nepo-baby sludge, and if his dad was anyone else he'd be a personal trainer in the Phoenix area. He's nothing more than a Colton Dach or Landon Slaggert.

Kesseling didn't manage to stick in the NHL until 25. He's nothing more than a Louis Crevier. Ethan Del Mastro isn't right-handed, but he's the same thing.

Oh don't worry, the Hawks will let it slip to their Pravda that they called about both, but the prices were too steep or that there wasn't a match. They want you to know they tried, that they're looking, but they just have to be extra careful. This is White Sox horseshit.

So which is it? Either the Hawks think every single player that they have under contract under the age of 30 is untouchable, or other teams think that their prospects aren't worth shit. Which one makes you feel good? Either the Hawks simply decided to not offer more than the earwax and couch-pizza that the Mammoth cobbled together for Peterka, or they couldn't in the eyes of the Sabres. They also have somehow figured out some double-secret roster rule that's going to allow them to stuff all these players in the pipeline onto the team at once in a couple years.

Yes, Utah signed Peterka for $7.7M right after acquiring him. So what? That's the going rate for players who can score 70 points. What are the Hawks cap concerns two years from now? Assuming they don't keep acquiring other teams' problems by then, which I guess we can't assume.

The sycophants will tell us that making a trade for players who are good now isn't part of "the plan." Let's be clear, hoping Michael Misa falls to #3 isn't a "plan." It's a hope. Having the balls bounce their way once to get Bedard isn't a "plan." It was a wager that won. Not knowing who is going to be the top line winger, much less both, when this team is even representative again, is not a plan. Outwardly stating that they're going to send the first six years of Bedard's career into the toilet isn't a plan. Not overhauling the development system, if that was going to be the only route of getting top line players, isn't a plan. It's wishcasting. Having a third coach, and one that was only wanted by the Hawks, isn't a plan. It's settling/scrambling.

It's not a plan to accumulate so many picks that anyone could just run into a few players. That doesn't make Davidson some sort of four-dimensional genius. It's lowering the averages until they can't help but work in your favor on occasion. Is Nazar a product of great scouting and projection, or a product of hucking so many darts at the board that one has to end up in the bullseye? They already seem to be regretting the picks they made at #2 (Levshunov) and #7 (Korchinksi).

If Rinzel is such a sure thing now after nine games, doesn't that mean Oliver Moore is a bust after the same amount of time? If that's the sample we're using, then why isn't Davidson getting lampooned for missing with that 1st rounder? Maybe nine games in the NHL isn't a plan, either.

Every Hawks fan needs to be asking how this team, with the acquisition of Andre Burakovsky and then basically screaming they're packing up for the summer right after the draft, will be any better next season. Simple growth from young players? Isn't that counter-balanced by Donato's shooting-percentage deflating, Dickinson getting hurt again, and wonky goaltending? Spencer Knight's .893 SV% doesn't guarantee a baseline for anyone next season. He's just as much of a question.

But the "plan" isn't about getting better, is it? It's about hoping that it all comes together at some nebulous point in the future due to some incalculable alchemy. That's not a plan. It's hope.