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.

I just think, between the three of them, Kaiser will be the first to get dangled for a trade or the first to fail and not get resigned. Not that I think he absolutely won't be around or anything like that. He could absolutely be resigned and stick with CHI for a while. This also illustrates that even if they do treat him as trade bait rather than a long term piece, we have other nice options on the way that make it more than pallatable to move him. Especially if it brings back a nice piece that fills a hole elsewhere in the lineup or another nice future draft pick of some sort. We don't really need to get too attached to anyone yet. Most of them could be dangled at some point to add futures to supply a continuous reload of young cost effective players, feeding the pipeline to fulfill the goal of "building for long term success", as Kyle Davidson puts it.

Cap could become an issue real quick, though, depending on who we draft, who hits, and who else we sign. But, I was mostly referring to getting to the floor. So, this roster won't be possible because of that. They will have to continue to sign free agents to fill cap space, which will take roster spots away from younger players.

As far as Kurashev goes, I could see him still being around. But, there are a handful of the current younger(ish) Hawks that I think fit the mold of "trade bait" more than "long term piece", if I'm being totally honest. e.g. Kurashev, Raddysh, Guttman, Kaiser, Katchouk, etc. I am even open to the possibility of guys like Reichel, Nazar, Rinzel, among others becoming available for the right price or to bring in the right piece.

So, nothing here is definitive or absolute. I just didn't want to sign a million different players and go over ever single detail of every single possibility. This started out being more so about possible picks for the 2024 and 2025 drafts.

One more thing, though. I know Kayumov has fallen off a lot of peoples radar, but I still think he could be a good one year signing for next season. Mostly for the purpose of giving him an opportunity to showcase himself on NHL ice and maybe we get something for him from a team that needs someone very affordable that can play "right now". The next 1 to 2 years are kind of "now or never" for him to come to North America and we own his rights. So, if we can at least utilize him to add back to our prospect pool in some way, why not?