Chicago Blackhawks general manager Kyle Davidson is changing his tune from trying to raise the standards when the offseason started to that the franchise is still in the middle of an extensive rebuild.

Maybe it took Kyle from Chicago a few months to realize that signing Tyler Bertuzzi and Teuvo Teräväinen along with Pat Maroon, Craig Smith, T.J. Brodie, and Alec Martinez off the veteran free agent scrap heap just was not going to be enough to elevate the Hawks up the standings.

On the flipside, Davidson should have been preaching what he was saying today, and that is prospect development and still acquiring prospects is more important than victories.

Davidson on fan reaction: "We needed to build through the draft and rebuild our core and that takes time…We aren't getting more wins at the NHL level, but that growth is happening under the surface…nothing has gone on in our prospects development that is causing me concern."

— CHGO Blackhawks (@CHGO_Blackhawks) January 27, 2025

Saying it was time to raise the standards was a major miscalculation Davidson made in the offseason.

The bigger picture, like what Davidson was preaching today, should have been the entire focus of the offseason.

Kyle Davidson makes it clear that the Blackhawks are still in the rebuilding stage, but he still expected more from the NHL team this year. pic.twitter.com/k8qtqORM4i

— CHGO Blackhawks (@CHGO_Blackhawks) January 27, 2025

That may not sell tickets, but not giving false hope has left a fan base even more frustrated.

Maybe Davidson got blinded by the Calder Trophy-winning results Connor Bedard put up last season and thought that would accelerate the rebuild.

The problem was he paired up Bedard with the wrong coach then because Luke Richardson foolishly focused on getting Connor to be a better defensive center. Maybe figuring out how to keep refining his scoring game with a major target on his back should have been given more attention.

The defensive focus should have come in like Bedard’s third or fourth year. Hey, Richardson is gone now, and Anders Sorensen is at least getting back to focusing on helping Bedard’s offensive game thrive.

Plus, Davidson should have realized that the future pieces that will likely help Bedard elevate the Hawks out of the Central Division’s cellar are not even close to making significant NHL contributions.

At the very least, Davidson was going to let potential core players like Frank Nazar, Kevin Korchiniski, and Artyom Levshunov grow at their pace.

That can take a long time. Look at how long it took for Alex Vlasic to be considered an outstanding defensemen. It does not happen overnight.

Other potential core pieces such as Oliver Moore, Sacha Boisvert, Sam Rinzel, and Ryan Greene are still playing college hockey. They still have to sign their entry-level deals at some point and go through the same development process being afforded to the current crop of top prospects already in the NHL fold.

So, it was just flat out miscalculating to say the standards were going to rise when only some solid veterans like Bertuzzi and Teräväinen were added when the rest of the roster was made up of bridge-veterans covering time until the core pieces are ready to take over.

What should have been the focus all along was the rebuild was on the right track with all the young talent being acquired.

I point to this again today after Davidson's presser

The #Blackhawks rebuild & future is still on the right path, despite their NHL results this season, because we are seeing young players come to the NHL & not look out of place.

Half of tomorrow's lineup could be U23 players https://t.co/j0CqPI7O8Z

— Mario Tirabassi (@Mario_Tirabassi) January 27, 2025

To be fair, the promise of Bedard moving the rankings of elite NHL players was enticing enough to commit to raising the standards. Plus, Philipp Kurashev and Jason Dickinson were coming off career years.

Even though they were likely to return to the mean, no one could have foreseen Kurashev being this terrible this season.

Still if Davidson is reversing course and asking for the big picture to be looked at, then he should have never committed to raising the standards until the team was actually ready to potentially meet that.