As Blackhawks’ permanent general manager, Kyle Davidson’s big ideas will meet a big challenge

The Blackhawks are expected to name Kyle Davidson their permanent general manager Tuesday, per a Monday report by Frank Seravalli of the Daily Faceoff.

Davidson — the Hawks’ interim GM since Stan Bowman’s exit in October — will become the 10th GM in franchise history and, at age 33, the youngest GM in the NHL.

After a year of scandal, disgrace and exodus that has decimated the Hawks’ off-ice reputation and esteem, dropping it to a level below even that of the poor on-ice product, Tuesday should represent the first significant, positive step forward into the next era of the franchise.

But one step forward unveils the just how long and difficult the 1,000-step climb back to the mountaintop will be.

Davidson is a bold thinker who may well be equipped to handle the challenge, but he’ll be tested in his first couple years on the job arguably more than any of his nine Hawks GM predecessors ever were. Even with business president Jaime Faulkner and CEO Danny Wirtz taking the reins on the off-ice side, the team and hockey operations department Davidson inherits desperately needs just as much of a makeover.

A former intern with the Hawks right out of college, Davidson has gradually worked his way all the way up the organization’s hockey operations ladder over the past decade, eventually ascending to assistant GM in 2020.

His wide-ranging experience on the way up — from contract negotiations to salary-cap management to player scouting to analytics — made him qualified for the interim GM job, and his experience gained over the past five months make him qualified for the permanent GM job.

But those things also make him an “internal” candidate, something that will only make the Hawks’ already frustrated and jaded fan base even more skeptical of him. The same can be said for his relative youth, considering how disastrously the Hawks’ “young coach” experiment with Jeremy Colliton fared.

Davidson’s first challenge, starting Tuesday morning, will be to win over the fan base, and he’ll need to walk a delicate line to do so. He’ll simultaneously need to establish his legitimacy and respectability, making fans believe in his ability to stand up to the other 31 GMs, while also showing off his personable side, relating to fans who felt ignored or demeaned by Bowman and his stubbornness.

Davidson’s second challenge, starting perhaps as soon as Tuesday afternoon, will be to intensify trade negotiations in earnest ahead of the March 21 deadline.

The coming three weeks are a vital time for the Hawks to jumpstart their rebuild as quickly and aggressively as possible, because they can’t afford to waste time when the timeline back to contention already looks so lengthy.

This story will be updated.

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