The Chicago Blackhawks' forward depth has taken a massive hit over the last few weeks.
Andreas Athanasiou has been out since Nov. 9 with a groin injury. Taylor Hall will undergo ACL surgery on his right knee on Monday and is expected to miss the rest of the season. And Corey Perry is "away from the team for the foreseeable future" and it's unclear when he could be back, if at all.
That's three pieces in the top-nine out, all at once.
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On Saturday morning, Blackhawks GM Kyle Davidson spoke to the media to address a variety of topics, including whether or not he could add a forward externally to help stabilize the group.
"We'll see," Davidson said. "It's not an easy thing to do just to add on the fly, especially this early in the season. There are probably other teams that would be far more aggressive than us in trying to add talent if we were to look at that. It's not something I'm looking at right now.
"We'll see how Cole [Guttman] and Joey [Anderson] assimilate to the group and how they do. They played really well last night. Obviously that's just one game, but we're hopeful that they can jump in and fill some roles – and also hopefully we can get some players back at some point.
"I'm not ruling anything out, but at this point it would be difficult to be aggressive in adding to the team."
Chicago Blackhawks
Obviously, the Blackhawks are in no position to be buyers, but that doesn't mean they won't entertain the idea of adding a serviceable NHL player or two if it makes sense, to make sure their young players are being supported.
But first, the Blackhawks will look for answers internally, which is why they recalled Joey Anderson and Cole Guttman from Rockford.
"It’s always something you’re considering," Davidson said. "It’s always something you’re thinking about, but that’s why there’s some leaders who have been through some streaks and how to get out of a rut; it’s important to have in there and we do have that in there, so we’ll lean on them.
"As far as the scoring, I think we've got some young players that we hope will continue to step up and increase the ability of our team to put offense on the board. So we’ll lean on them.
"Obviously Connor’s line has been playing well. But you know what? Look at Jason Dickinson’s line with [Nick] Foligno, they were dynamite last night, and so we’ll look for contributions throughout the lineup and hopefully some of these players who came up from Rockford can give a little extra juice to the offense and forward group moving forward."
Off the ice, the Blackhawks have lost a couple big presences inside the locker room with Hall and Perry. Davidson doesn't seem to be too worried about the void there.
"There's been a significant growth in the group as a collective," Davidson said. "We did bring some players in, but we had some strong leaders already here. It's just a collective leadership group that's going to continue forward. I've been really happy with how the collective has led so far, and I trust that they will do so moving forward.
"You look to some of the older veterans that have been around and have been added that are in that locker room right now, and I have no fear that there's enough quality leadership to carry this forward."