Chicago Blackhawks general manager Kyle Davidson answers hard hitting question from team reporter Scott Powers

«It's all about the trajectory. You hope that through the improvement of your young players and the development of your young players that continues to elevate the improvement of your group and your team and your spot in the standings. That's always what you're shooting for.

«I think we are going to be younger. We are going to be way younger than where we started the season last year. I think that's exciting. That also brings a much more volatile ebb and flow of what you get. Youth goes through growing pains at different times and for different reasons. That's something we're likely to see just based on youth. But you hope that keeps ticking upwards, and the development of those talented young players will break into the NHL full-time this year, elevates your group and continues that upward trajectory."

«It's going to be a totally different look this year. There's going to be a lot of excitement in that and a lot of exciting moments from young players where you can see what's coming, you can see what this is going to look like and you can see how they're all going to impact the team at the NHL level. There's excitement in that. And that's what we expect. We expect our players to continue to improve and that improvement to improve the team and the results."

«What that looks like you never really know. Youth is unpredictable, especially at the NHL level, but we feel they're ready. It doesn't mean there's going to be players that struggle and they need the instruction, need the education, need the information to continue to improve, kind of dig themselves out of little ruts as they figure out the NHL grind and the NHL schedule and how you need to be successful and the way you need to play at the NHL level. But with the new coaching staff, really excited for them to get their hands on this group and to dig in and see all these players taking steps and getting to know some of these players even better because some of them were here for just a very short time at the end. I think that's something that's exciting, something that we need to continue to see improvement out of this young group, and through that we should see improvement not only in our style of play but hopefully results-wise, too. But I think there is excitement that we ended the year with.»