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

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

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

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

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

But the Sharks and Hawks entered the day with the same number of regulation victories: 16. The difference between them stems entirely from overtime/shootout success, which usually is considered more luck than skill. The Sharks are 11-4 in games that go beyond regulation; the Hawks are 5-9.

The Hawks’ minus-30 goal differential has fallen behind the Sharks’ minus-16, but the teams’ expected-goals ratios during five-on-five play are nearly identical at 44.3% and 44.5%, according to Natural Stat Trick. (Last season, their ratios were 43% and 44%, so both have improved.)

The Sharks are the only team the Hawks haven’t faced this season, but that will change Monday at the United Center in the penultimate game before the Olympic break. The teams will play twice more in April.

The second divergence is in philosophy. Sharks general manager Mike Grier seems to think his team’s window for playoff contention has opened and has shifted into ‘‘buyer’’ mode.

Grier recently traded two second-round picks to the Canucks for rental forward Kiefer 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 likely would require the equivalent of multiple first-round picks (in either pick or prospect form) to acquire.

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 can be filled with trade additions.

A sizable portion of the Hawks’ fan base reacted negatively to Davidson’s words, 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, however, is that Hawks fans as a whole are more satisfied with the rebuild now than they were awhile ago, likely because they’re getting to see 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 they think the rebuild is ‘‘moving at the right pace,’’ rather than too quickly or too slowly. That’s up from 53% in a poll in October 2024 that posed the same question with the same wording.

What’s your big-picture opinion about the current state of the Blackhawks’ rebuild?

— Ben Pope (@BenPopeCST) January 29, 2026

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

Or perhaps it’s a vocal minority that’s displeased with the rebuild and a silent majority that’s pleased. 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 a question about the pace of their team’s rebuild. 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 defenseman Ryan Ellis’ dead contract to the Hawks in the trade Jan. 8 for goalie Laurent Brossoit also indicated they intend to spend enough on prime-aged players next season not to need artificial help getting to the salary floor.

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

Regardless, the Bedard vs. Macklin Celebrini debate appears destined to live on for 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, who is in his second season, appears to have a step up on Bedard, who is in his third. But it feels as though the publicly perceived superiority might swing back and forth throughout their careers.

Celebrini entered Saturday 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. Bedard actually held a 44-43 lead in points after each had played 31 games, but their seasons have diverged in the last 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 the team’s decision to draft Artyom Levshunov over Ivan Demidov in 2024, even though it’ll take years to determine Levshunov’s true ceiling. Many Sharks fans, meanwhile, yearn for a right-handed defenseman, which is what Levshunov is.

That positional imbalance might contribute to Celebrini’s advantage over Bedard at the moment, considering Bedard doesn’t yet have anyone such as 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 might change that soon, however. The Hawks also are trending toward a higher 2026 draft pick than the Sharks, which might yield the additional high-end forward prospect they’re missing.