Alex DeBrincat traded to the Ottawa Senators

It finally happened.

On Wednesday afternoon, the Chicago Blackhawks traded Alex DeBrincat to the Ottawa Senators for a first and second-round pick in this year’s draft along with a third-round pick in the 2024 NHL Draft.

Here are the details, straight from the Blackhawks’ official Twitter account — along a master class in burying the lede:

DeBrincat, 24, came to the Blackhawks as a second-round pick (39th overall) in the 2016 NHL Draft. He debuted with the big club one year later, scoring 28 goals with 24 assists during his rookie season. DeBrincat played five seasons with the Hawks, playing in 368 games with 160 goals and 147 assists. He has a pair of 40-goal seasons to his name and was just an NHL All-Star for the first time in his career.

Based on the reaction from, oh, everyone on Twitter, the return on this trade feels massively underwhelming.

We’ll have more as it goes, but it appears that the Blackhawks’ rebuild is officially on.

[UPDATE] Following the DeBrincat trade, here’s the list of picks that the Blackhawks now have for the 2022 NHL Draft:

[UPDATE] In this 1:18 clip from the NHL Network, Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman discussed the DeBrincat trade. The interesting part starts around the 0:30 mark:

Friedman: “Looking at the return, it just says to me that at some point in time, the Blackhawks said we are making this trade.”

Guess what Blackhawks GM Kyle Davidson said last week during the introductory press conference for head coach Luke Richardson when Davidson was asked about the potential of acquiring a first-round draft pick for the 2022 NHL Draft:

“It would be nice. We don’t have one right now and it would be nice to have one, but again we’re not going to force anything. I think when you’re trying to make something happen, that’s when you make mistakes. We’ll see what’s there and if we can get into the first round, absolutely, we’d like to. It just might not be available to us. We’ll kind of take what comes.”

Yikes.