The 2023–2023 NHL season has officially come to a close as the Vegas Golden Knights demolished the Florida Panthers in five games to win the franchise’s first Stanley Cup. While the Hawks season has been over for much longer, today seemed like a good day to look back at this team’s season. To say it was a season of change would be a gross understatement, and while it would be easy to call this year a complete failure, I think that is the absolute farthest thing from the truth.
A few years down the line, I think that we as fans will look back at this last season as an important one. It will be known as the year the identity of this team changed. We said goodbye to two legends, Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews. These two guys gave this franchise a second life and put the Hawks back on the map. They reminded this city that we, in fact, did have an NHL team and made the game of hockey cool again in Chicago. They took us on three amazing Stanley Cup runs and gave us countless other memories. I don’t think words can ever express how much they truly meant to this team and city.
However, with the departure of these two icons, the foundation for an even more exciting future was laid. Kyle Davidson went all in on the rebuild, and while moving on from franchise icons was never going to make him a fan favorite, he stuck to his guns, made the decision, and, in the process, asked us for our trust that it would be worth it in the end. After living through the Stan Bowman Era, I know that for me, trusting the GM after that was never going to be easy, but in just a year and a half of the KD Era, I feel more confident in him than I have ever felt in Stan. He cleared out the cap space he needed and added an absolute haul of draft picks to add to a prospect pool that is already ranked in the top 5 of the league. All of this work he had done would have made this year a success for him on its own, but to top it off with landing the draft lottery win and being able to inject Connor Bedard into all future plans, KD has to be absolutely happy with this season.
Usually, when a team goes 26-49-7 in a season, the words successful season are not going to follow, but for the Hawks, that is the case. Going into this season, we knew this was a team that was built to lose. What we didn’t know was how Coach Richardson was going to handle a rebuilding situation in his first year as head coach. He started off the right way when he talked about how this team wasn’t going to just let teams come in and win games easily; this team was going to make their opponents earn everything they got. For the most part, this was true; I think you can count on one hand the number of times this team was truly blown out. Coach Richardson came in with a game plan to give this team an identity and get them playing structured hockey, something that has been missing since the firing of Coach Q. Despite the fact that everyone knows this is going to be a rough few years, with his style of coaching and the type of hockey he wants this team to play, he is making Chicago a destination for players once more.
With all that being said, I know it is only year one of this rebuild, and there is so much that could still go wrong that could delay the timeline for the Hawks to be Stanley Cup contenders. However, with the way this year has played out and looking at what this organization already has going for it and what is about to be added to it in just a few weeks, I think you can take some pride in how this season played out and get excited for the future. Get excited, Hawks fans! I think we are being set up to go on an amazing ride once again.
The Latest WCBPodcast