Do the Blackhawks have too many good prospects?

The Chicago Blackhawks might be a team on the rise, but if they want to get over the hump, they might need to do something about the large number of young players in their ranks.

The Blackhawks showed promise last year, getting off to a hot start before an injury to star forward Connor Bedard derailed the team’s momentum in December. Yet, there is hope in the Windy City. That said, one thing Chicago lacks is experience, and talented experience at that. With so many exceptional young players, especially up front, the surplus of prospects might be what’s holding the Original Six franchise back.

On this week’s edition of Daily Faceoff LIVE, Steven Ellis joined Tyler Yaremchuk and Carter Hutton to discuss what the Blackhawks should do with their massive number of prospects.

Steven Ellis: I think you can look at it and say, like, you. I know guys are going to move around, but if you’re three centers that you’ve got there, your primary guys being Bedard, Anton Frondell, Frank Nazar…that’s tough to get a lot of ice time out of there. Then, you’ve also got Oliver Moore, who’s very good. I don’t think he’s a fourth-line player. I think he’s now a third-line guy. I think you’ll probably see Frondell maybe move to the wing once we get Bedard back from his injury, and I think that’ll be important to get him. It could be nice that he’s probably starting as a center, but that’s a lot of responsibility for a guy who wasn’t playing center last year for the majority of the season in Sweden, and might not be the most offensively gifted player. What he’s got to do is find other ways to be very effective, and he’s got a great shot. So, I feel like he’ll be a good mix with Bedard at some point.

They also have a ton of defensemen, a ton of guys on the right side there. I think that makes things a bit more interesting down on their pipeline. I think with them, I’ve made an argument that they should have actually been shipping off prospects at the last two trade deadlines. I know that they’re still kind of in this rebuild, but you still got to think about guys that can be impact players maybe a bit more immediately. This is the year where I feel like it’s probably going to happen because this is a team that is going to take steps forward. You don’t sign a guy like Patrick Kane and not think, ‘Okay, we’re going to try and at least be somewhat competitive, right?’ … I think Kane still wants another shot at being competitive, and I think there is a possibility that we could see the Blackhawks…they’re probably not going to make the playoffs but they’re going to be closer to what we saw from San Jose last year which was they were a threat they were contender obviously not enough in the end but they were still in that conversation.

You can watch the full segment and entire episode here…