Future Hawks

Plus the chance of a ton of second round picks panning out. Hawks look to be a weapon in 2026-2030.

The future is bright indeed!!!

What happened to Kaiser?

Also, don't sleep on Roman Kantserov, has top 6 potential. Gavin Hayes may pan out as a bottom 6 as well.

In regards to Kaiser, I figure between him, Korch, and Vlasic, he will become the odd man out to make room for younger players and/or 5-7 dmen with more affordable AAV's. He has the tools to be a top 4 dman and will likely price himself out. If one of our other LHD seems to be panning out, he will likely be the one that gets dangled on the trade block, IMO.

Definitely not sleeping on Kantserov, though. I'm well aware of his upside, been watching a decent amount of Metallurg games. Side note, I love their orange alternates and I wish I could find somewhere to buy one. But, I just didn't want to add too many players and I also wanted to include our possible 1st round picks for the next two drafts. I also wouldn't be surprised if he signs for an extra year or two in the KHL beyond the 24-25 season.

Also, this roster for that season isn't possible anyway, because we need to hit the floor. So, just keeping it simple while illustrating the possibilities.

Allan is less than a year younger than Kaiser so non consequential IMO. Hawks should have no issue keeping Vlasic, Korchinski and Kaiser I would be more concerned personally with Allan, Phillips or Del Mastro outplaying any of those 3 to earn a spot, or conversely, they have Allan and Phillips playing on the right side in Rockford so maybe one of those guys ends up making it to the NHL on the right.

Needless to say, just look at the cap space you have here, they haven't even hit the cap floor. Fast forward one more year, Murphy falls off the books and there's $50M in cap space to sign Korchinski, Kaiser and Bedard (let's call that $20M more) and then the lesser guys like Commesso, Dach, Allan and Ludwinski assuming they all make it (let's call that $10M combined). That's $30M of $50M available. Point is, cap is not an issue. We need Rinzel and one of Philips or Allan to be able to play on the right for everything to pan out though.

I still think Kurashev is on this team as well. He's a solid 3rd liner and going to bring experience to this team a couple years from now.

Needless to say, it's exciting to see this team develop and to do so with so many prospects available to them in a couple more years. Organically build 90% of the team and fill in a couple gaps with vets with plenty of cap space to play with.