Blackhawks GM Kyle Davidson had a quiet NHL trade deadline day.
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Blackhawks general manager Kyle Davidson realized — when he decided in January to re-sign pending free agents Nick Foligno, Jason Dickinson and Petr Mrazek — that doing so would lead to a quiet trade-deadline week.
Those veteran players, after all, would’ve been the most appealing Hawks on the market.
As it turned out, Davidson’s week was even quieter than he initially anticipated. The NHL deadline passed Friday afternoon without the Hawks making a single trade on deadline day itself; their only move of the week involved dealing Anthony Beauvillier to the Predators for a fifth-round pick on Thursday.
“Heading into it, I thought there would be a little more activity, [although] whether we did something or not was a different story,” Davidson said Friday. “I wasn’t dead-set on trying to make other moves. If it happened, it happened, and it didn’t.”
This year’s mood — and Davidson’s phone bill — couldn’t have possibly been much different than the last two years, when Davidson executed several high-profile trades (involving the likes of Patrick Kane and Brandon Hagel) as well as a barrage of small ones.
“The last two deadlines I’ve worked have been so busy that this felt different,” he added. “You’re thinking, ‘Is there something else I should be doing?’ … To say it was much more quiet would be an understatement. It was different. You still work the phones the same, but there’s less substance in those phone calls, which feels like you’re spinning your wheels a bit.”
Colin Blackwell and Tyler Johnson — two pending free agents who weren’t extended earlier this season — were considered the most likely Hawks to move, but demand for depth forwards never seemed to materialize much around the league. Blackwell and Johnson will end up sticking with the Hawks for the final 19 games of the season.
The Hawks did lose depth forward Boris Katchouk to a waiver claim by the Senators. Katchouk finishes his Chicago tenure having tallied 26 points in 117 games, including nine points in 38 games this season. The Hawks probably didn’t plan to re-sign him this summer, so his departure won’t be too maligned.
Young defensemen Isaak Phillips and Louis Crevier were sent down to Rockford since veteran defenseman Nikita Zaitsev is expected to return to the Hawks’ lineup Saturday against the Capitals, which would’ve bumped both Phillips and Crevier into healthy-scratch territory.
This story will be updated.