Blackhawks blow up roster by trading Alex DeBrincat, Kirby Dach for 5 draft picks

MONTREAL —Kyle Davidson has made his decision. The Blackhawks have begun a scorched-earth rebuild.

And neither Alex DeBrincat nor Kirby Dach will be part of it.

DeBrincat was traded Thursday to the Senators for the seventh and 39th overall picks in the 2022 NHL Draft, plus a third-round pick in 2024. Hours later, Dach was traded to the Canadiens for the 13th and 66th overall picks.

The Hawks also acquired the 25th pick and goalie Petr Mrazek from the Maple Leafs, then selected defenseman Kevin Korchinski, forward Frank Nazar and defenseman Sam Rinzel with their three newly acquired first-round picks.

The trades cemented the Hawks’ plan to completely tear down their current roster and reconstruct their organizational depth chart through the draft, accepting years of struggles in the meantime.

The return for DeBrincat was underwhelming, given the 24-year-burgeoning superstar had previously been considered the centerpiece of the Hawks’ new core. The return for Dach was far more palatable, considering the former third overall pick’s difficulty finding his stride in the NHL over his first three seasons.

“It was an incredibly difficult decision to trade a player of Alex’s caliber,” Davidson said in a statement before the Dach trade. “We feel as if this move sets the Blackhawks up for future success by giving us additional flexibility and future talent… [This] allows us to fortify our prospect base with high-end players who we expect to be difference-makers in the coming years.”

The trades end DeBrincat and Dach’s Chicago tenures shockingly abruptly.

DeBrincat was coming off a fantastic 2021-22 season in which he tied a career high with 41 goals and arguably surpassed Patrick Kane as the team’s best player. He, in total, tallied 160 goals and 307 points in 368 games over five seasons with the Hawks.

Dach, meanwhile, struggled with his confidence throughout much of his straining season, finishing with 26 points in 70 games. After a promising if understated rookie season, his wrist injury in December 2020 set him back significantly, and he ultimately tallied just 59 points in 152 total games for the Hawks.

One logical criticism of the trades is that DeBrincat, still only 24 years old, will likely always be — even in several years, when the Hawks start trying to contend again —better than anyone the Hawks select with the picks. Even Dach, at age 21 with plenty of elite physical tools to build around, might one day also fit that description.

DeBrincat is admittedly due a massive payday next summer, when his current contract (with a $6.4 million salary cap hit) expires, and the Senators reportedly haven’t talked with him yet about a possible extension. But he could become a franchise centerpiece-type of player, and for a Senators team trying to ascend after years of mediocrity, he’s a very worthy use of cash.

It’s surprising the Hawks didn’t acquire a single existing prospect from the Senators, either. Ottawa’s prospect pool is talented — Jake Sanderson, Erik Brannstrom, Ridly Greig and Jacob Bernard-Docker are all high-upside guys —yet Senators GM Pierre Dorion kept all of them away from Davidson’s fingers.

And while the package Montreal surrendered for Dach more accurately reflects his perceived value, a 13th pick —originally acquired from the Islanders by the Canadiens in a separate swap designed to enable the Dach trade —is still quite a bit lower than a third pick, like the one the Hawks used to pick Dach in 2019.

The Hawks are nonetheless expected to portray the trades as just two pieces of a bigger-picture puzzle moving forward. Given Davidson’s lack of leverage, he’ll have a difficult time getting fair value for anyone. His plan is to accumulate so many picksthat some inevitably develop into game-changing players down the road.

Gutting the Hawks’ roster of talent —in other words, tanking —could also improve the Hawks’ own pick positions in 2023, with the goal of ending up with a top-three overall pick and the ability to select one of three star prospects: Connor Bedard, Matvei Michkov and Adam Fantilli.

The spotlight now turns to longtime franchise cornerstones Kane and Jonathan Toews, who hold no-trade clauses and haven’t tipped their hands if they want to stay or leave Chicago.

Davidson would probably love to convert the two veterans (and anyone else with interest around the league) into future assets, but the GM has promised he’ll respect Kane and Toews’ wishes. DeBrincat and Dach’s departures may well influence their decisions, as it has become abundantly clear the Hawks plan to ice an otherwise terrible forward lineup next season.