Chicago Blackhawks 2011 Offseason Guide - Part 1 - Introduction

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One year ago at this time the Chicago Blackhawks were in the midst of a magical playoff run that led the Hawks to their first Stanley Cup in 49 years. This year, the season ended earlier than the most fans had hoped as the Blackhawks fell to rival Vancouver 4 games to 3 in the first round of the NHL playoffs. It was a difficult season for the Hawks for a number of reasons including the Cup Hangover, the trimming of the roster due to the salary cap and bonus penalties due to Toews and Kane achieving bonuses in 2009-10, injuries and fatigue, and the fact they had the target on their back that being a defending Stanley Cup champion carries. However, the idea behind this blog is not to summarize the 2010-11 season. It instead will focus on where the Blackhawks are today, and what things could look like going forward in 2011-12 and beyond.

The 2010-11 Chicago Blackhawks were a flawed team. The salary cap stripped the team of much of their physical and gritty depth. In looking at the roster, this is the main area of concern going forward. How do the Hawks go about adding the physicality and sandpaper that this team was missing in 2010-11? There’s a couple of ways that this can be done, either through development of young players in the organization who fit these roles going forward, signing free-agents to fill those roles, or via trade. When reading this blog, it is important to remember that a lot of the decisions on how this writer would fill the roster going forward are based on what has been said above. The Hawks need to add sandpaper and depth to their lineup, moreso than adding another big name.

Other Hawks needs include more depth at center, a physical stay at home defenseman for the third pairing. Addressing those two needs would go a long way to addressing the need to improve the Hawks’ penalty kill which ranked near the bottom of the league for much of the 2010-11 season.

The rest of this blog will be as follows:

Part 2 will deal with the current roster. In Part 3 I will begin to project a 2011-12 roster. Part 4 will continue with the 2011-12 roster projection. Part 5 will discuss Brian Campbell and Part 6 will wrap things up.