EP Rinkside 2021-22 Prospect Pool Rankings: No. 27-ranked Chicago Blackhawks

The Chicago Blackhawks rebuild is over, and it barely even started. An aggressive off-season highlighted by the acquisitions of Seth Jones and Marc-André Fleury signal the organization's shifting priorities, away from picks and prospects and towards the post-season.

This shifting paradigm and the graduation of top prospects like Ian Mitchell, Philipp Kurashev, and Kevin Lankinen have taken a bite of their system, but so too has the immediate success of some of their recent top-10 picks like Kirby Dach and Adam Boqvist (a central component of the Jones trade).

So, in some ways, the Blackhawks ranking might overstate the shortcomings of this scouting group, one with a solid track record where it matters most -- at the top of the draft. It isn't quite that simple though. They've invested a great deal of mid-range draft capital on low upside bets in the pursuit of size and gumption, and that's dragged down the quality of their pool, too.

This system is among the deeper ones in the NHL, but it lacks credible star power. They only have four prospects with a Future Value (you can read about Future Value or FV for short by following this link) rating of five or better, and only one that crests the six mark. Let's see what the future holds in Chicago.