Blackhawks Must Balance Development & Experience to Succeed – The Hockey Writers – Chicago Blackhawks

The Chicago Blackhawks are entering the third season of their rebuild. The first two seasons were all about tearing down and starting over. This 2024-25 season is the beginning of building back up again. The organization was busy this offseason, acquiring players to provide more support to their young core (especially Connor Bedard). But rebuilds take time, patience and a lot of strategic decisions. How can you best develop your prospects? How do you balance your salary cap; not just for one season, but for the future as well? And how do you put all the puzzle pieces in place so everything comes together at the same time?

Related – Blackhawks’ Bedard Effect Continues to Have an Impact

Well, let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves. These are decisions for the big brass to determine, not the fans and the media. But we sure do like to put our two cents in, don’t we?! One question that seems to be coming up again and again in Blackhawks’ circles is this; will all the new veterans be holding back the prospects?

Let’s dissect that question to see if we can come to some conclusions.  

Too Many Veterans for the Blackhawks?

We all know by now that the Blackhawks added plenty of veteran presence to their 2024-25 roster during the offseason. Here’s a breakdown of all the players who are 30 years or older, or who will turn 30 during the season, and how much longer each contract runs:

That’s 14 players who will be 30 years or older during the season. Wow, that’s kind of a lot of “old” guys taking up roster spots. With a 23-man roster, that only leaves nine spots for younger players and prospects.

If we look at the rest of the roster, the players who will likely take the remaining nine spots are Bedard, Philipp Kurashev, Lukas Reichel, Jason Dickinson (just turned 29, so doesn’t count for above), Ryan Donato, Joey Anderson, Alex Vlasic, Kevin Korchinski and Wyatt Kaiser.