Kyle Davidson hasn’t hesitated throughout his short general manager tenure so far to give failed Blackhawks prospects opportunities for fresh starts elsewhere.
Wednesday represented the biggest wave of such moves yet, as the Hawks organization made three separate trades that moved on from Nicolas Beaudin, Evan Barratt and Riley McKay.
Beaudin was dealt to the Canadiens for forward Cameron Hillis, and Barratt was dealt to the Flyers for defenseman Cooper Zech.
McKay, Kirby Dach’s former junior-hockey teammate, was reunited with Dach in the Canadiens organization in what was technically a trade for future considerations (but realistically nothing) between Rockford and Laval, the two teams’ AHL affiliates.
Hillis, 22, and Zech, 23, will theoretically provide warm bodies to fill out lineups for Rockford or the Indy Fuel, the Hawks’ ECHL affiliate. Hillis, a 2018 third-round pick, played one NHL game last season but began this season in the ECHL. Zech has tallied 36 points in 131 AHL games for the Flyers and Bruins’ affiliates.
But these moves were really about helping out Beaudin and Barratt, even with little-to-no benefit to the Hawks. Tellingly, they’re both headed home: Beaudin hails from the Montreal suburb of Chateauguay, Quebec; Barratt grew up in the Philadelphia suburb of Bristol, Pennsylvania, and played at Penn State.
They fall in the same category as Davidson’s trades last December that sent Malcolm Subban to the Sabres and Chad Krys to the Maple Leafs.
This marks a disappointing end to Beaudin’s tenure in particular. The 27th overall pick in 2018 — the Hawks’ second first-rounder that year after Adam Boqvist — had seemingly broken into the NHL during the pandemic-shortened 2021 season, but he then fell completely out of favor after ex-GM Stan Bowman’s resignation. He’d spent last season and the first couple weeks of this season fighting for limited ice time on Rockford’s third defensive pairing.
“It has been hard sometimes,” Beaudin said in March. “We all want to be in the NHL. It’s not easy. The AHL is a tough league, a grinding league, so you’ve just got to keep going.”
Barratt, the Hawks’ third-round pick in 2017, had been decently productive for Rockford the past two seasons, recording 42 points in 90 games. But approaching his 24th birthday in February, his road to the NHL with the Hawks appeared difficult to plot out.
“I’ve got to look in the mirror and say, ‘You’re not that old. You need to relax a little bit,’” Barratt said in September. “I’ve got to realize I’m still very young, I’ve got a lot to learn and my time will come eventually.”
