(As we begin our State of the Franchise series, we start off with one of the Blackhawks’ biggest recent struggles: the draft)
One of Chicago’s most glaring weaknesses during the last few seasons has been on the blue line, where aging veterans Duncan Keith and Brent Seabrook aren’t the same players anymore, and no young talent behind them has emerged — yet — to make up for Keith and Seabrook’s collective regression.
There are many other avenues to explore in explaining the Blackhawks’ recent demise, but much of it boils down to one key failure by this team:
And Hjalmarsson was drafted in 2005.