Chicago Blackhawks Insider: Looking Ahead to Next Season

The Blackhawks quest to defend their Stanley Cup title fell apart in Game 7 of their series against the Vancouver Canucks. 

It’s now time for Chicago to head into the offseason prepared to make the changes necessary to help get them back to the Stanley Cup Finals next season and win hockey’s highest honor once again.

Like any team that is sitting at home watching the rest of the playoffs, the Blackhawks do have some work to do. They need to try to add some additional pieces to help get them back to where they were just a season ago.

The 2010-2011 team was not that bad and ended up being the victim of some bad luck and missed opportunities. Injuries came at bad times (such as injuries to Patrick Kane, Marian Hossa and Patrick Sharp) and with those injuries, the Blackhawks had difficulty winning some games. 

They also lost some of the chemistry last offseason as they had to open up some cap space by letting a few veterans go (including Dustin Byfuglien and Antti Niemi). 

It just wasn’t the same team.

But good teams learn how to overcome these problems and move ahead. Granted, the Blackhawks were able to find a goalie to replace Niemi with Corey Crawford and also found that guy to be that third “star” so to speak in Patrick Sharp.

There are a lot of good things to come out of this season for the Blackhawks but there were also some difficult things that caused them to falter.

This team could easily get back to the playoffs and get to the Stanley Cup Finals once again as long as they have a productive offseason that brings them some new and “better” pieces to the puzzle known as the team than they should see some success in next season.

But at the least, the Blackhawks certainly made things interesting this year especially in the playoffs where they just about took care of the Vancouver Canucks. 

It was an exciting series and indicative of the kind of series that we thought that we would see out of the Blackhawks.

Now we just have to hope that they are prepared to work hard this offseason to start putting together the kind of team that can come back next year and win the Stanley Cup.

But there is going to be some work that the Blackhawks are going to have to get done first before they can consider getting back to the big game. There are some holes to fill and plenty of personnel decisions that will have to be made during the next few months. 

Hopefully, the Blackhawks management is willing to open things up a little bit, take some risks and get ready for what we all hope is the ramp up to another championship season.