The Athletic has live coverage of the 2024 NHL Draft.
LAS VEGAS — Chicago Blackhawks general manager Kyle Davidson will not likely be holding any player or agent meetings outside in Las Vegas this week.
It will be a high of 107 degrees on Thursday, and it won’t get much better in the coming days.
Of course, that’s not all the information we’ll have for you this week. Mark Lazerus and Scott Powers arrived in Las Vegas on Wednesday and will be here through the draft, which runs Friday and Saturday.
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Wednesday brought some action with the Blackhawks acquiring forward Ilya Mikheyev, the rights to pending unrestricted free agent Sam Lafferty and a 2027 second-round draft pick from the Vancouver Canucks in exchange for a 2027 fourth-round pick.
What will Thursday and beyond bring? Here’s what we’re hearing.
Ilya Mikheyev could have denied the Canucks’ request to drop his no-movement clause and voided the trade with the Blackhawks. So, what sold him?
“Deep dish pizza,” his agent, Dan Milstein, said.
Obviously, but what else?
“There were other teams also that wanted to make a trade with Vancouver,” Milstein said. “So obviously we considered all options. But I met and had extensive conversations with Kyle Davidson and also other people in the organization, and we knew exactly what the role that he was going to step into and the opportunity. It was just as clear as a day in Chicago that he had the best options to help the team start winning.”
The Cancuks are retaining some of Mikheyev’s contract. The Blackhawks’ responsibility will be a $4,037,500 cap hit.
The Canucks shed salary on a player who wasn't living up to the money anymore.
The Blackhawks get a functional NHL player for their middle six. A nice piece of work for both sides. pic.twitter.com/305bsDoZ9a— dom 📈 (@domluszczyszyn) June 27, 2024
The Blackhawks and Sam Lafferty’s agent are expected to meet in Las Vegas on Thursday. There’s obviously familiarity and comfort there for both sides, but it’s not a given they’ll come to a contract agreement.
Lafferty, who turned 29 in March, will likely look for some stability heading into his 30s and a pay increase coming off the two best seasons of his career. His expiring contract was a two-year deal with a $1.15 million cap hit.
On the other side, the Blackhawks like Lafferty enough to bring him back, but they’re also in rebuild mode. Will they offer more than a few years? They should be able to pay him over market value for at least a few seasons. Would that be enough?
Stay tuned.
The Blackhawks likely envision Mikheyev as a third-line winger and Lafferty a fourth-line center or wing. Both would be upgrades from what the Blackhawks had last season.
The Blackhawks’ bottom six would likely include Jason Dickinson, Nick Foligno, Ryan Donato, Mikheyev and Lafferty. Landon Slaggert will likely be in that mix, too. And depending on whom the Blackhawks add over the next week, that could bump other players down the lineup.
If the Blackhawks get a deal done with Lafferty, they would likely be close to finalizing their bottom six. You would think the focus at the start of free agency will be adding top-six players with more offensive upside.
It doesn’t sound like the Blackhawks have closed the door on re-signing Joey Anderson, one of the Blackhawks’ best players based on analytics last season. Anderson would bring more competition to the lineup.
There’s a chance the Blackhawks could give him a qualifying offer before the upcoming deadline, but their preference is likely to complete a deal before then. A qualifying offer could open the door to Anderson opting for arbitration.
Before writing our draft analysis story on obtaining elite wingers or defensemen, we turned to league sources for their opinions. We received one from an NHL assistant general manager after the story was published.
The question posed was which of two players the AGM would take with a high draft pick if they thought both players were equal in upside.
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“I don’t think it matters,” the league source said. “If you’re between a winger and a ‘D,’ I think you just pick the player with the greatest probability to reach the highest potential to influence winning the Stanley Cup and sort it out later. I didn’t study in the top five or top 10 in each draft, but I would surmise that more teams’ best winger comes in that window than best defenseman, but I also think that’s because people find it easier to evaluate forwards, and the pressure on young defensemen drafted high is great and the fan base often turns on them in their third year when they’re 21.”
Davidson met with the media in Las Vegas on Thursday. He was asked many different ways about the No. 2 pick and the overall draft, but he ultimately didn’t show his hand in any way.
Davidson said the Blackhawks have made a decision on who they’re drafting at No. 2, but, of course, wouldn’t say exactly who. There were plenty of questions pertaining to Ivan Demidov and Artyom Levshunov, and Davidson did his best to answer them without showing favor to any specific player.
“They’re all really good options and so that just lends itself to a debate that you want to give the proper time to, right?” Davidson said. “You don’t want to anoint anyone or any one direction too soon, and so you give it time to breathe, you give it time to digest new information and so it’s been a pretty healthy debate and one that we’ve taken a lot of time to consider. But again, with great options come that debate. If it was a no-brainer then we probably would have known months ago or whenever the lottery was.”
Davidson also said he was still open to moving up and down from his 18th pick.
The biggest takeaway from Davidson’s media session Thursday was don’t get your hopes up in free agency.
Davidson was asked whether he was going to prioritize top-of-the-lineup offensive players after acquiring role-type players in Wednesday’s trade. Davidson seemed to be tempering expectations.
“It’s something that we plan on exploring,” Davidson said. “Once you get into that realm, you’re talking bigger money, bigger term, bigger commitment. So we have to make sure it makes sense. Would we like to add more offense? Yeah, we would. But it’s got to make sense. It’s got to fit. We’ll explore what’s there and see if it does make sense, but it’s something we’ll look into for sure.”
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Considering Davidson has said he expects the Blackhawks to take a step forward next year, the follow-up question was whether that step was realistic unless he brought in a significant upgrade offensively.
“We basically didn’t have Taylor Hall or Andreas Athanasiou for the whole year last year,” Davidson said. “So, getting them, they’re filling spots. They were here last year, but they weren’t playing. Connor (Bedard) was great, but you expect him to continue to get used to the NHL and get more comfortable and continue his improvement and ascension. There will be natural progression in that way, but you want to help support that; you don’t want to rely on what’s already in place. You always want to try to improve. We’ll explore it, but we won’t do anything that we believe impacts negatively on the longer-term vision.”
(Photo of Ilya Mikheyev and Sam Lafferty: Bob Frid / USA Today)