Bowen Byram is in Chicago, and that alone tells you how far Kyle Davidson is willing to push this thing.
Byram spent July looking for a house in the city. A week after his wedding, he was already skating with Alex Vlasic and Artyom Levshunov while he and the Blackhawks were still sorting through viewings.
The deal itself had been finished earlier: six years, a $12.5 million cap hit beginning in 2027-28 and, according to The Athletic’s Scott Powers, a full no-movement clause. He had not yet played a game for Chicago.
The price was steep. Davidson sent the fourth and 45th picks in the 2026 draft, along with Louis Crevier, to Buffalo for Byram and Jordan Greenway. Davidson defended the cost of moving a high pick this way: "I think when you're talking about a draft pick, the likelihood of that player if it's not maybe (Nos.) 1 or 2 in some years, playing in that year coming up right after that draft is fairly unlikely."
Byram sounded ready to move on. "To be honest, I feel like I've just been preparing for hopefully an opportunity like this for a long time."
The Blackhawks clearly believe they have one now. Byram is not being sold as a finished superstar, but he is a strong 25-year-old coming off career highs of 11 goals and 42 points in 82 games.
Most of that work came alongside Rasmus Dahlin on a Buffalo blue line that helped deliver the franchise’s first Atlantic Division title and snapped an NHL-record 14-season playoff drought. Even so, the path in Buffalo was limited.
With Dahlin, Owen Power and Mattias Samuelsson ahead of him, the No. 1 role was never really his, and he was one year from unrestricted free agency.
"He wasn't gonna sign with us," Sabres GM Jarmo Kekalainen said.
The reaction to Chicago’s move was immediate and harsh. The Athletic’s Dom Luszczyszyn called the extension "an unfathomable deal for a player of Bowen Byram's current stature."
Daily Faceoff’s trade grade put it even more bluntly: "Either way, this is his Alamo." Then Cale Makar signed an eight-year deal at $20.4 million per season on August 28, and suddenly Byram’s number looked less outrageous than it had a few weeks earlier.
Still, this is a major swing.
Chicago has reasons for taking it. The Blackhawks finished 29-39-14, moved Connor Murphy to Edmonton on March 2 and, reportedly, beat out the Sharks and Rangers for Byram.
Davidson’s own message on the player was simple: "He's going to own it." On September 21 at the United Center, Byram backed that up in a preseason game, scoring a hat trick against an AHL-heavy Wild lineup and winning it 29 seconds into overtime.
The bigger picture, though, still points to a long climb. Online betting sites are projecting the Blackhawks as a +450 longshot to make the playoffs in 2026-27, behind only the Calgary Flames at +750 and the Vancouver Canucks at +800. That puts the pressure squarely on Davidson, whose track record says these swings can go either way.
Alex DeBrincat is the cleanest example. In 2022, Chicago traded him on draft night after his 41-goal, 78-point season, with Ottawa sending back the seventh and 39th picks plus a 2024 third-rounder.
The Sun-Times called the return "underwhelming, given the burgeoning superstar had previously been considered the centerpiece of the Hawks' new core." Davidson’s defense was that the cap flexibility "all goes into the 'return.'"
DeBrincat’s shooting percentage dipped, he never signed long-term, and he was moved again a year later. The real payoff for Chicago turned out to be the collapse that followed and the lottery win that delivered Connor Bedard.
Brandon Hagel was an even more painful exit. At the March 2022 deadline, he had 21 goals and 37 points in 55 games and was shooting 22.3 percent on a $1.5 million salary.
Tampa Bay’s offer, as the Sun-Times put it, blew Davidson "past the moon." Chicago sent Hagel and two fourth-round picks to the Lightning for Taylor Raddysh, Boris Katchouk and two top-10-protected first-rounders.
Davidson made the rebuild explicit at the time: "I said a few weeks ago that we are rebuilding, and this is clearly the start of that."
Hagel went to the Stanley Cup Final that spring, then posted 64, 75 and 90 points, made the NHL Second All-Star Team and won Olympic silver with Canada. Raddysh and Katchouk never stuck in Chicago, while the picks turned into Oliver Moore and Sacha Boisvert. It remains the clearest loss of Davidson’s tenure.
Seth Jones was a different kind of move. After a 2-1 loss to Utah on February 26, 2025, Jones said, "This has been almost four years of, you know, bottom of the league," and three days later he was gone to Florida.
Chicago retained part of his $9.5 million cap hit and got a first-round pick plus Spencer Knight, who had been stuck behind Sergei Bobrovsky and posted a .907 save percentage that season. Florida won the Cup again, Jones had nine points in 23 playoff games, and Knight responded with 33.47 goals saved above expected in his first full Chicago season behind a shaky defense.
Patience paid off there.
Kirby Dach is the cautionary tale on the other side. Chicago sent the 2019 third overall pick to Montreal on draft night in 2022 for the 13th and 66th picks after he managed 26 points in 70 games.
He later tore his ACL and MCL in a game against Chicago in October 2023, and another knee surgery ended his 2024-25 season. The Blackhawks used those picks on Frank Nazar and Gavin Hayes.
That leaves Byram as the latest and biggest test. Davidson has lost two of these four major gambles on paper, and he keeps making them anyway. The organization has one of the league’s largest analytics departments, and the Sun-Times reported that Davidson pushed ahead with the Byram move even though the models disagreed.
The logic is straightforward enough: rebuilding through picks only gets you so far, and eventually you have to pay for someone who can help now. That is what makes Byram different from the other swings.
DeBrincat, Hagel, Jones and Dach were moved out to build the future. Byram was brought in as part of the payoff.
So the real questions are right in front of Chicago. How many minutes does he play?
Can he shut down top lines instead of just carrying the puck? And does the blue line finally start to close the gap that made Buffalo decide he was not its No. 1 answer?
Davidson has bet his tenure on the answer.
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