Blackhawks, Sharks' rebuilds starting to diverge as Sharks pick up pace, Hawks stay patient

For several years, the Blackhawks and Sharks' front offices have moved in relative lockstep.

Both franchises opted for scorched-earth rebuilds, tore down their rosters, endured some horrendous seasons to get top picks, drafted the two best young studs in the NHL and accumulated the two best prospect pools around them.

This season, however, the first signs of divergence have emerged. The first divergence is in the standings, where the Sharks appear to have an advantage — although the meaningfulness of that advantage is up for debate.

Entering Saturday, the Sharks — with 58 points in 52 games — trailed the Ducks, who held the last wild-card spot, by just one point with two games in hand. The Hawks, with 51 points in 55 games, sat well behind, albeit still on pace for significant improvement upon last season.

However, both the Sharks and Hawks entered Saturday with the exact same number of regulation wins: 16. The difference between them entirely stems from overtime/shootout success, which is usually considered more luck than skill. The Sharks are 11-4 in post-regulation games while the Hawks are 5-9.

The Hawks' minus-30 goal differential has fallen behind the Sharks' minus-16, but the two teams' expected-goals ratios during five-on-five play are nearly identical at 44.3% and 44.5%, per Natural Stat Trick. (Last season, their ratios were 43.0% and 44.0%, so both have improved.)

The Sharks are the lone opponent the Hawks have not yet faced this season, but that will change Monday at the United Center in the penultimate game before the Olympic break. The two teams will meet twice more in April.

The second divergence is in philosophy. Sharks general manager Mike Grier seems to believe his team's playoff contention window has opened, and he has shifted into "buyer" mode.

Grier recently traded two second-round picks to the Canucks for rental forward Keifer Sherwood, a 30-year-old pending free agent whom nobody realized the Sharks would be interested in.

Now Grier has pushed the Sharks into the sweepstakes for Rangers star Artemi Panarin, a 34-year-old forward who would likely require the equivalent of multiple first-round picks (in either pick or prospect form) to acquire.

Hawks GM Kyle Davidson, on the other hand, is absolutely not about to begin parting with any future assets for short-term additions. He will be a seller as usual ahead of the trade deadline, especially since he needs to move out a couple veterans to clear late-season roster spots for prospects like Anton Frondell and Nick Lardis.

As Davidson reiterated for the umpteenth time in December, he plans to "hand things over to the young players and let them run with it." Only once the dust has settled, "over the next year or two," will he determine what holes could be filled with trade additions.

A sizable portion of the Hawks' fan base reacted negatively to that Davidson interview, raising a fuss about how slow his rebuild has been. They fear the Hawks are wasting Connor Bedard's early years and instilling a potentially hard-to-shake losing culture.

The truth is, however, that Hawks fans as a whole are more satisfied with the rebuild right now than they were a while ago — likely because they're now getting to witness young players' development at the NHL level with their own eyes.

In a Twitter/X poll of 2,238 Hawks fans Thursday, 59.8% answered that they believe the rebuild is "moving at the right pace," rather than too fast or too slow. That's up from 53.0% in an October 2024 poll that posed the exact same question with the exact same wording.

Perhaps public opinion has shifted even since December, considering the Hawks entered the Christmas break in a 3-12-2 nosedive but have gone a respectable 8-8-3 since (although they have now lost five straight).

Or perhaps it's a vocal minority that's displeased with the rebuild and a silent majority that's pleased. Hawks defenseman Connor Murphy brought up that possibility this week while discussing how supportive and patient the fan base has been, at least toward him.

It would be interesting to see how Sharks fans would answer that question about rebuild pace. Anecdotally, many of them seemed alarmed by the Panarin report, arguing it would be unwise to sacrifice long-term talent for a short-term upgrade — even one of Panarin's caliber — at this stage.

Only 1.3% of Hawks fans answered that the rebuild was "moving too quickly." Would a more significant percentage of Sharks fans choose that option now, in light of the Panarin intrigue? Perhaps so.

The Sharks' willingness to give Ryan Ellis' dead contract to the Hawks in the Jan. 8 Laurent Brossoit trade also indicated the Sharks intend to spend enough on prime-aged players in 2026-27 to not need artificial help getting to the salary floor.

The Hawks, who intend to populate their 2026-27 roster with as many kids on entry-level contracts as possible, alternatively may need that help.

Regardless, the Bedard vs. Macklin Celebrini debate appears destined to live on for many, many years. If things pan out as planned for both organizations, it has the potential to dominate the Western Conference conversation throughout the 2020s and 2030s in the same way Sidney Crosby vs. Alex Ovechkin did in the Eastern Conference throughout the 2000s and 2010s.

Celebrini, in his second season, does appear to have a step up on Bedard in his third season. But it feels like the publicly perceived superiority might swing back and forth throughout their careers.

Celebrini entered Saturday in fourth in the NHL scoring race with 79 points in 52 games, while Bedard's shoulder injury and post-injury slump have limited him to 52 points in 42 games. After 31 games played each, Bedard actually held a slim 44-43 lead in points, but their seasons have diverged over the past two months.

Beyond those cornerstone players, the Hawks have invested somewhat more in young defensemen and the Sharks somewhat more in young forwards.

Many Hawks fans already regret drafting Artyom Levshunov over Ivan Demidov in 2024 — even though it'll take years to determine Levshunov's true ceiling — while many Sharks fans coincidentally yearn for a right-handed defenseman (which is exactly what Levshunov is).

That positional imbalance may actually contribute to Celebrini's advantage over Bedard at the moment, considering Bedard doesn't yet have anyone like Will Smith, the No. 4 overall pick in 2023 who has 37 points in 39 games on Celebrini's wing this season.

Frondell and Roman Kantserov's arrivals could change that soon, though. The Hawks are also trending toward a higher 2026 draft pick than the Sharks, which could yield the additional high-end forward prospect they're missing.