The Chicago Blackhawks did most of their heavy-lifting before free agency opened on July 1 by adding Nick Foligno, Taylor Hall and Corey Perry via trade and re-signing Andreas Athanasiou. Their only signing of the week was Ryan Donato, who inked a two-year deal.
On Wednesday, Blackhawks GM Kyle Davidson held his final media availability before the offseason truly begins and acknowledged the roster is pretty much set.
"I would say we are, if not done, we're very, very, very close to being done," Davidson said. "There's always things that could come up, but I don't foresee anything coming down the pipe."
Stay in the game with the latest updates on your beloved Chicago sports teams! Sign up here for our All Access Daily newsletter.
The Blackhawks' forward group looks fairly crowded, as it currently stands. Training camp will determine roles and spots, and which players could be on the outside looking in.
The defense, however, is a slightly different story. The Blackhawks will probably give more opportunities to their young players such as Alex Vlasic or Isaak Phillips or even Wyatt Kaiser, but they might not mind adding another player for insurance reasons.
"We might look at a spot or two for depth," Davidson said. "But we may also just stay patient on that and wait until the fall. Nothing we're chasing right now. We found Jarred Tinordi late in the process last year and could go down that road again with a depth player later on, but nothing we're necessarily looking to move on anytime soon."
One of the reasons the Blackhawks signed Donato is to make sure they're keeping everyone properly slotted on the organizational depth chart up front (that includes Rockford). They likely want to do the same on the back end.
Chicago Blackhawks
"Injuries do happen," Davidson said. "I could be wrong here — I'm trying to remember — but I don't think we had a forward recall before Christmas. We had extraordinary health up front last year, or enough where we didn't have to recall anyone. That's not normal. So we wanted to make sure that if we do find ourself in a spot with injury, we do have some versatile veterans in the lineup to bounce around and take some different roles."