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I’m actually a Sabres fan lol. So maybe that’s where my ting of reaction giving the Hawks a lot more grace comes from. I love Byram as a player.
I never said it wasn’t bad. We came out significantly better in the deal. I just think some of the commentary acting like their rebuild has tanked bc of this is overblown. People can laugh in my face all they want with that take. I could be extremely wrong.
But I just think the Hawks overpay needed to happen to undercut the Sharks.
Fans act like the 4OA is guaranteed to be Makar-like. How many D men in the last 5 drafts were better than Byram in 2026?
It’s one of the hardest positions to draft AND it takes 3-4 years to figure out what you have. No way Chase Reid would have the same immediate impact fresh off the draft.
Respect your take though! This is just mine.
I don’t know why you’re arguing about it on anon in my inbox, honestly. I thought about not even answering this, but unfortunately I am, at my core, a massive hockey nerd, so let’s get into exactly why people by and large (including every experienced analyst in the game, by the way) are not really overreacting when they say that this was a horrible move by Chicago.
Off the bat, I think you’re misunderstanding why people think this was a bad move. It has very little to do with Byram as a player, and more to do with cost and return for Chicago, combined with what Chicago actually needs.
First let’s get into the part I think you’re most locked in on: the player analysis and whether or not Byram was worth a 4th overall pick. The short answer is no, he’s not. Byram was drafted at fourth overall so we can actually do a 1-to-1 comp here. To borrow some relevant statistical analysis from Dom Luszczyszyn at The Athletic: the average No. 4 pick is worth 9.3 wins over their first seven seasons. To date, Byram’s been worth just 3.3, meaning the odds of that pick alone being more valuable than Byram are reasonably high.
There’s also the sunk-cost of the picks the Hawks have already used trying to find their guy on defense rather than using them to get Bedard some help up front. Chicago desperately (and at this point I do mean desperately) needs a high-end winger. Under no circumstances should they have traded that 4th overall pick for anything else. It’s not like good wingers are hard to come by in this league. It’s frankly a knock against their FO that they haven’t been able to get one yet.
To your point that the Hawks overpay needed to happen to undercut the Sharks, I’m sorry I have to laugh, that’s fucking ridiculous. Stopping the Sharks from getting a good defenseman out of some petty rage over the Sharks having a higher draft pick and being likely to pick Stenberg, who the Hawks desperately need, is a fucking waste of a top 5 pick. The Hawks need to focus on their own crumbling ship as opposed to ineffectually attempting to sabotage the Sharks. It’s not even great as revenge, the Sharks didn’t lose anything in this move. Don’t get me wrong, I can respect sabotage, but frankly the Hawks are in absolutely no position to be moving like this. They had the 4th overall pick in an extremely strong draft class and they threw it away in a stupid attempt to screw over the Sharks, screwing themselves over far worse in the process. It’s not like immediate returns on a defenseman changes the fact that they have literally no one to help Bedard on the wing, which is their whole problem.
To your point about drafting defense, I don’t really agree with the take that fans are acting like any DMan who could go at 4th is guaranteed to be Makar-like, but maybe you’re seeing takes I’m not. While it is definitely true that defense is the hardest position to draft, this draft class is widely considered to be one of the best for defense in recent memory, and the top picks especially are very much standing on their own. It’s mostly a given that McKenna is going to go 1st, but I’ve seen a lot of scouts and analysts repeatedly say—especially since the draft prospects camp a couple of weeks ago in Florida—that it’s essentially a 5-way tie between the top 5, and plenty of them have actually ranked Reid over Stenberg and McKenna in strict skill rankings. What’s even crazier is that scouts and analysts can’t even agree on that top 5, so the entire top 8ish is pretty neck and neck. There’s some truly wild defense skill in this draft. That’s not to say that I think any of them are going to be Maker in five years (that’s the part that’s hard to predict), but I do think they’re better than average.
To your question: How many D men in the last 5 drafts were better than Byram in 2026? I’m sure you meant this hypothetically to prove a point, but lets have a look anyway, shall we?
The short answer is this: 9 defensemen drafted in the last 5 drafts were better than Byram this past season. 21 defensemen drafted in Byram’s draft class (2019) or later had a better season than he did. Given that, it’s not like it’s insane to think that Reid or Carels or Verhoeff will end up coming out ahead.
I reached the above numbers by looking at a myriad of defensive stats but for best overall rankings I used Game Score and Net Rating. Of defensemen drafted in 2019 or later, Byram ranks 22nd. 9 of the defensemen ranked ahead of him were drafted in 2021 or later. In fact, 6 defensemen from his own draft class had better seasons than he did.
Anyway this is much longer than I intended for it to be, but the point is that people aren’t overreacting for the dramatics or to shit on Byram. In fact, no one is even saying that Byram isn’t a great player. Out of context, he’s a huge get in the current market. But the context is what’s important here, because it’s what makes this a brain-dead move from the Hawks, one that to me actually is indicative of a front office that’s bad for the team and the rebuild they’re supposed to be working on.