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What if Blackhawks hadn’t traded Niklas Hjalmarsson, Artemi Panarin

The nice thing about winning three Stanley Cup championships in a decade is fan bases don’t have a lot of “What If” moments regarding the Blackhawks of recent past.

Outside of a fluky bounce in Game 7 of the 2014 Western Conference Final that cost Chicago a shot (or, given the opponent, an inevitable coronation) at back-to-back Stanley Cup victories, much of what’s transpired in the Blackhawks world has ultimately worked out.

So, as part of SB Nation’s weeklong “What If” exploration into alternate sports realities, we turned our attention to one of the biggest moments in Chicago’s post-dynasty years: the one-hour span on June 23, 2017, when the Hawks stunned the hockey world with two massive trades.