The Chicago Blackhawks made some tough moves during their rebuild. Some of them made the team worse in the short term, but improved the future. One of those moves was the trade that sent Brandon Hagel to the Tampa Bay Lightning.
Hagel was traded to Tampa during the 2021-22 season. In the 55 games leading up to the trade, Hagel had 21 goals and 16 assists for 37 points. He wasn’t a point-per-game player, but the goal scoring and feistiness in his game were exactly what the Lightning were looking for.
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That spring, the Lightning made it all the way to the Stanley Cup Final. It was their third straight appearance in the big series, but Hagel’s first. The Colorado Avalanche defeated them and have been working to get back ever since.
What happened next for Hagel was unexpected by both the Blackhawks and the Lightning. There was always more room for development in his game, but nobody projected him to go from a solid middle-six forward to a star NHL first-liner.
With the Lightning, Hagel is a point-per-game player who is strong in all three zones, is hard to play against, and will drop the gloves with anyone. At this point, he’s one of the premier “pests” in the NHL.
Team Canada in best-on-best tournaments is the hardest team in the world to make. They selected Hagel for the championship-winning 4-Nations Face-Off team in 2025 and the Silver Medal-winning Olympic team in 2026.
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Hagel had 36 goals and 38 assists for 74 points in 71 games played this season. He missed some time with an injury, but he was an elite player once again when he was healthy. Last season, he had 35 goals and 55 assists for 90 points in 82 games. The level he has proven he can get to would help any team in the league, especially when you combine it with the other attributes that make him a winning player.
On Tuesday night, Hagel played a key role in the Lightning’s Game 2 win over the Montreal Canadiens. After scoring two in Game 1’s loss, he followed it up with his third goal of the playoffs and first assist.
Hagel also fought former number one overall pick Juraj Slafkovsky during regulation to secure a Gordie Howe hat trick. In what was close to a must-win situation, he showed up as the true playoff performer he is. Everything that the Stanley Cup Playoffs require suits his game well.
“I never would have expected that, to be honest,” Hagel said on the Gordie Howe hat trick. “Obviously, whatever it takes to win. Sometimes it takes fighting, and sometimes it takes scoring goals. I was lucky enough to squeak one by, and Kucherov made a good play. [It’s] a good feeling that we won tonight.”
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Despite Hagel’s success with Tampa making the trade look bad, it was the right move for the Chicago Blackhawks at the time. Would they like to have him back right now? Sure. But they wouldn’t be where they are now if they kept him, and likely, neither would he.
In exchange for Hagel, the Blackhawks received two roster players and a first-round pick in the 2023 NHL Draft. They eventually used that pick to land Oliver Moore. Moore may never be as productive as Hagel, or maybe he will be, but with his age, he fits the Blackhawks timeline a lot more.
Not having a developing Hagel in 2023 also contributed to the Blackhawks being the third-worst team in the league. That 30th-place finish gave them good odds to win the draft lottery, which they did. Connor Bedard may not be in Chicago if they don’t trade Hagel away. If he makes them an even slightly better team in 2022-23, the results of the lottery may have been much different.
No matter how you slice it, the Blackhawks were not going to execute a proper rebuild if they stood pat. Sustained success is ahead of them now, but they needed to get rid of some good players to get to this point.
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Hagel wasn’t the only great player let go by Chicago. Alex DeBrincat, Dylan Strome, and even Patrick Kane ended up on other teams despite being productive Blackhawks.
Hagel’s playoff brilliance on Tuesday night has him at the front of everyone’s mind, and the Blackhawks traded an elite player away, but it had to be done.
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