Report: Blackhawks put Kane and Toews in awful position

Don't look now Chicago Blackhawks fans, but your team looks poised to put up one of the worst season's in the team's recent history. And for fans of a certain vintage, that's really saying something.

The Blackhawks look intent on tearing down everything and going into a full rebuild mode over the next few seasons as evidenced by their offseason transactions. Gone are young stars in the making like Alex DeBrincat and Kirby Dach in favor of future assets (ie Draft picks). In effect the Blackhawks' roster looks like this: Jonathan Toews, Patrick Kane, Seth Jones and... well... not much else. .

There have been rumors that both Toews and Kane could be on the move at some point this season, but so far there's been no movement. GM Kyle Davidson maintains that both players are focused on having a good training camp and returning to the only team that they've known their entire NHL careers.

As for the players, they admit that the thought of a trade has crossed their minds but they haven't explicitly requested a trade from GM Davidson... yet.

“There hasn’t been much discussion about anything, even with my agent or my parents or my family,” the 33-year-old Kane said to the Chicago Sun-Times' Ben Pope. “We all know the situation [with] what could potentially happen. It’s not really anything I’m thinking about as of yet. So we’ll see how it all plays out.

“I don’t think anything’s gotten to that point, or even close to it,” Toews said. “I don’t think it will for quite some time this season. The thought for myself personally has always been to keep trudging forward and getting better.

“Obviously it would be fun to be on a winning team and live that dream again, but I’m not letting my mind get there now.”

Experts around the team have posited that Davidson and the rest of the Blackhawks' management staff are holding out on trading Kane and Toews for public perception reasons. Sure, they want to trade the players in order to get some premium assets back, but they first want the two franchise icons to ask out. This allows the Blackhawks to skirt any criticism for trading such revered players. After all, fans weren't exactly thrilled when Duncan Keith was sent packing.

Frankly, I think the Blackhawks are just putting Kane and Toews in an awful spot here. The right thing to do for everyone involved is to move them and allow them to play out their final years on a competitive team.