The Prospect the Blackhawks SHOULD Move Back into the 1st Round For

#Blackhawks GM Kyle Davidson on whether he hopes to acquire a first-round pick in this year's draft: «It's definitely something we'll look at. Whether that's a possibility is a different question, but it's something I'm definitely interested in."— Charlie Roumeliotis (@CRoumeliotis) May 16, 2022

The question remains though, who is Davidson interested in should he acquire said pick? There are certainly many possibilities up and down the first round projections, especially given the dire state of the Blackhawks prospect pool as Lukas Reichel is their only prospect ranked in the top 100 by both TSN and The Athletic, it seems like it might depend on what pick Davidson is able to acquire. I'm not going to try and guess which move he makes to acquire said pick, but instead point out WHO they should use that pick on: Ivan Miroshnichenko.

The Russian born 6'1" 185 lbs right handed shot left winger, Ivan Miroshnichenko, is a high scoring power forward that started the year projected to go as high as 2nd Overall in this years draft. His natural ability and style of play have earned him player comparisons to Andrei Svechnikov and even as high as Alexander Ovechkin. His goal scoring knack, elite stick handling ability, skating ,and physical play style make him one of the most talented players in this years draft. But, a series of very unfortunate events happened to Miroshnichenko over the past few months.

He was diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma in early in March of this past year. While he is expected to make a full recovery, and in fact as of June 10th has already been cleared to return to play, he draft projections did suffer as a result. While his draft ranking by no means out weigh in the importance of the young man's health, this was the just first of two events that were completely out of Miroshnichenko's control to effect his future. The second being Russia's decision to invade Ukraine. Many analyst have now dropped Miroshnichenko out of their top 10 projections and some have gone as far as to drop him out of the first round completely. Not because of his diagnosis but due to what TSN Draft Analyst Craig Button calls the "Russia Effect". Button and many others believe NHL teams will be passing on Russian born players in the draft due to invasion of Ukraine. While it may seem crazy to blame an 18 year old kid for the choices the leader of the country he happened to be born in made, it appears as though one of the Draft's most talented players is going to slip because of this.

Which means there is one NHL team that is going to have an absolute gem of a prospect fall into their laps this draft, and why Kyle Davidson should be trying to make the Blackhawks the team Miroshnichenko falls to. He would immediately become the Blackhawks most talented prospect and give Davidson a true building block as he begins his rebuild!