This wasn’t the plan. The 2021-22 Chicago Blackhawks were supposed to return this franchise to relevance with a playoff berth and perhaps even Stanley Cup contention after years spent on the outside looking in.

An off-season flurry of activity highlighted by the addition of high-priced veterans at every position -- Seth Jones, Jake McCabe, Marc-André Fleury, Tyler Johnson, and even Jonathan Toews -- to last year’s 20th place roster was a bold declaration that the Cup-winning core was not going to fade into a long rebuild but get a powerful shot in the arm that put them right back into the mix with the league’s top teams.

There were reasons to be skeptical of this plan, and many people were. Of 10 standings point predictions I tracked from statistical modellers, not one of them predicted that