JD isn't fully wrong here. The offseason after the 2015 Cup win was the beginning of a bad time period for Bowman and the Hawks. Sure, hindsight and all that but all within one offseason we traded Sharp and Saad and apparently according to most here on HF it was OBVIOUS that Seabrook was on the decline before the new contract.
Even if you think like I do, that there's no way Seabrook was going to be traded...b/c it would've been terrible PR for the Hawks, there is a point to be made that maybe there were enough signs out there signifying that the Hawks were going to be taking a step back from being a Cup-caliber team. And those signs were actually really accurate.
Don't forget how mediocre of a team we were that season. Toews started his first season after signing his contract giving him the highest AAV in the league by not even scoring 30 goals or 60 points in 80 games. Our roster was filled out with below-average players like: (Garbutt, Svedberg, Rozsival, TvR, extra-bad version of Gustaffson, bad version of Teravainen, Rasmussen, Mashinter, bad version of Danault, and A LOT of young players getting a dozen games or so up here who were learning the NHL game and not contributing much in the process.
The Hawks were propped up by Kane's best season of his career, Crawford playing really well, Panarin being a Calder winner, and Anisimov fitting that line like a glove. Statistically we were mediocre and so was our roster. We traded Saad and Sharp, Hossa was 36 years old, our 1C wasn't close to playing like one, our D corps was made up of Kieth, Hjalmarsson, Seabrook, and a bunch of shit. Not to mention our TDL acquisitions being a complete waste of assets and totally useless.
So yeah there's a lot of hindsight required here (especially with Toews' fall off) but less than some people think. The Hawks were never going to be a very good team that year