ST. PAUL, Minn. — Blackhawks general manager Stan Bowman hadn’t spoken to the print media for nearly a month prior to Saturday.

In that time, a lot changed with the Blackhawks. On Saturday evening before the Blackhawks played the Minnesota Wild, Bowman addressed several topics in a 20-minute session.

Here’s a rundown:

On whether he’s concerned about his job security

“We’re all evaluated. I can’t speak for what other people are thinking. I’m here focused to do my job until they tell me they don’t want me to do my job anymore. I don’t think you can think about it because it doesn’t help you at all. Focusing on something that ultimately is out of your control, all you’ve got to do is work and keep working every day. I’m determined to do my best to make this team better, and I’m going to keep working until they tell me not to.”

On whether he made too many changes after last season

“It’s hard to analyze this sort of mid-stream here. Some of the changes we made we had to make for the long-term success of our team, to be able to have a team that, looking at our team a year ago, we were an older team. I didn’t want to be a part of a group that was just trying to hang on to the past. We’re trying, in the process of competing for the Cup also, to rebuild this group so that we can be positioned for many years to come with younger players. I think the good news is a lot of those younger players have played really well. It’s the other end of it which we probably need more from. Each year is different. Some guys that played well last year aren’t playing as well, and some guys that weren’t as good are playing better now. So it would be nice if it fit in a good little picture that everyone who plays well this year is going to be even better next year. It just doesn’t work that way. You just have to sort of make adjustments as you go. The position we’re in now is not at all where we want to be.”

On whether the core is still untouchable

“I don’t know if you can ever say definitively on anything, but that’s not at all our focus right now. If anything, we’ve got to try to get their games back. If some of them were nearing 40 years old, then you might say, maybe their best years are behind them. But I look at these guys, they’re still young guys, They’re still in the prime of their careers. Maybe not the prime, but close to it. They’ve got a lot of hockey left in them.”

On why some of the core has struggled this season

“Everyone wants to — it would make for a better story if you could just sort of latch on to one, oh, we uncovered the problem. And then we just go fix it. It’s a lot more complex than that. If it was just one thing, we would have addressed it months ago and be different. These are human beings and athletes, and it’s not always a linear progression year to year. We want it to be. You were at this level last year, so you should be either at this level or above this year. Why aren’t you? Nobody has the answer to that. It’s part of performance, which it doesn’t always go in a straight line. We’ve got to get more, and we’re working, trying to get more, and hopefully we can find the way to do that.”

Brandon Saad hasn’t lived up to expectations this season. (Jerome Miron/USA TODAY Sports)

On Brandon Saad’s struggles this season despite his positive underlying numbers

“Yeah, he does a lot of good things. There’s a lot of the underlying things that point to him having a strong season, other than the goals and the assists part. I don’t know. I hate to use the word luck, but sometimes things don’t go your way even though you’re doing everything right. He could be one of those guys in that category and there’s sometimes guys on the other end that they’re having sort of a career season when stuff is just going their way. Obviously it’s not going Brandon’s way. But he has done a lot of good things. But at the end of the day when you look at the results, they’re not where he would want them to be or where we would want them to be. I don’t have an answer for that. Trust me, we spent a lot of time trying to lock in on that answer, but it’s not one thing. That’s the hard part, is if it was just one thing that was sort of leading a player astray, you could correct that. But it’s a multitude of factors and we haven’t found the right answer yet.”

On whether he’s confident Saad and Connor Murphy will perform better in the future

“Murph’s played pretty well. I think the hardest part for him was probably just the beginning. The first probably three weeks of the season, came into a totally different style of play, the way the coaches want our defensemen to play was much different than what he’d been doing for several years. And we saw that once he sort of figured out what was required of him. Yeah, I think Connor is headed in the right direction. Brandon had been here before, but things are different a little bit than they were then, so there’s still some adjustment going to a new team. But I think we’re past that adjustment phase now. But I do think in both of their cases, they’ve got a lot of great hockey ahead of them.”

On whether the franchise’s past success has set the bar too high

“We do, we have a very high standard. I think expectations are good. I don’t think you can’t run from them because who wants to be around where people don’t expect you to do well. I was here a long time ago when there wasn’t a lot of people following our team or wasn’t as much interest in the team. We don’t want to go back to those days. The fact so many people are passionate about our team, I think that’s a great thing. I feel very frustrated as well we haven’t been able to perform better this year and the last couple seasons. I don’t think you can look at what has happened. Yeah, we’ve accomplished a lot of things, but that doesn’t do anything right now. We’re focused on trying to get better. It’s not always a simple process. I think that’s probably the biggest thing that maybe people don’t realize. It’s not like there’s one thing that the answer’s right in front of you and people are refusing to do it. We’re all trying to make this better. We haven’t figured it out yet, but we’re going to keep trying. It’s our job to turn things around.”

Dylan Sikura is among college hockey’s top players this season. (Scott Powers/The Athletic)

On his confidence level regarding signing Dylan Sikura

“No indications. No reason not to think he wants to sign with us. We’ve had great dialogue going back three years with Dylan. Great discussions with him and his agent. Ultimately that’s his call, but I know he follows our team closely. I had a chance to see him last Monday. I know he knows our guys. He keeps in touch with [Alex] DeBrincat and guys like that on the team. He’s got sort of a friendship with some of the younger players.

Very hopeful. I don’t have any reason not to be. We try to be respectful and not bother him. He’s got a chance to do something special. They got a good team this year. I think they’re going to be in the mix for the NCAA tournament. You win a couple games and you make it to the Frozen Four. I told him the other day, that should be your focus. Think about your team here. You’re one of the leaders; you’re a senior. Go out on a high note. Whenever that ends, we’re ready for you.”

On wanting to re-sign Ryan Hartman, Vinnie Hinostroza and Anthony Duclair

“We have a lot of guys in that category, John Hayden as well. No, we haven’t done that. I’m confident we’re going to get those contracts all worked out. Some of them have arbitration, some of them don’t. The timing on things might be different for each one. Their situations are all a little bit different, number of games, experience, their performance.”

On whether he plans to keep them

“Yeah. We’re hoping. I don’t think contractually it’s a challenge. I think we want to get to the end of the year and see where we’re at in terms of do we need something different than what we have. I like the progression. Like I said, they’ve probably been the bright spot for our team this year.”

On trying to better utilize Marian Hossa’s LTIR space better in the future

“The cap so much wasn’t a problem this year. It was more … if you’re going to make a trade, you got to take someone out of the lineup. Like our younger players were playing good. That’s one of the things we’re not looking to bring in a veteran to replace those guys. I think each year is different. As we get to the summer, we’ll focus more on Hossa and the money and all that stuff. That really hasn’t been a primary factor during the season.”

On Hossa possibly returning next season or beyond

“I can’t answer that one. I don’t know. He’s not going to play this season. That’s all we really know. Can his condition clear up? I think, I can’t read the future, so I can’t really know that.”

On planning as if Hossa isn’t returning

“I’m not really … I haven’t thought about Marian because I know he’s not playing this year. I guess we’ll have to address that as we get to the summer. That hasn’t been something we’ve really spent any time on.”

Marian Hossa has three years remaining on his contract after this one. (Dennis Wierzbicki/USA TODAY Sports)

On whether the Blackhawks would be in a different place if Corey Crawford had been healthy

“I don’t know. I think everyone would probably look at the fact Corey’s an accomplished goaltender. He’s one of the elite four or five goalies in the league. Yeah, he probably would have been able to do some different things but he wasn’t here. We are where we are. For the first half of the season he was probably consistently our best player. Corey’s been trending that way. You look back at 2013, we won the Cup, he was a good goalie that year. But he seems like he got better and better. He was really important in 2015. He’s played a big role on these last couple teams. Even last year, we did have a lot of wins. There was a lot of similarities in a lot of games between this last month; last year we would find a way to win those games. We’ve found a way to lose games lately. Part of that is confidence. And part of it is Corey was really good at finding a way to get points when you didn’t play very well. There’s a lot of games last year we walked away with two points and we looked around and said, ‘Wow, we didn’t play very well, but we got the win.’ This year it’s sort of been the opposite. You walk away thinking, ‘Wow, we played a good game and we found some way to lose the game.’ That’s what happens when your team isn’t a confident group. We haven’t been a consistent group and that’s what we’re looking to capture down the stretch here.”

On this season being unfamiliar territory

“It’s been a trying year from that perspective, in terms of not getting the results. We’ve done some good things, but we’ve found ways to let games slip away, which has not been the tradition. We’ve had a group of guys that have been able to get those games when you’re trailing and you can tie it up, or when the game’s tied you can get it to overtime. We haven’t had as much success at that this year, which makes it a frustrating thing to watch. It would be a different feeling if we were losing 5-0 all the time and we were clearly overmatched. Then you have a little bit of a different feeling. It’s not a good feeling, I’m sure. But now you feel like we’re close, but we’re not able to get it to the important parts of the game and execute. It’s been a frustration. That’s probably been a common word amongst our players and coaches. We all feel the same way. We gotta just keep fighting.”

On whether Henri Jokiharju could play in the NHL next season

“He’s certainly got a possibility. A defenseman, it’s a challenge at 19 years of age, but we are seeing younger players, probably more young players than ever, are making it right now. Five years ago it was a much smaller number of 18-, 19-, 20-year-olds. His skill set is pretty special – the way he can handle the puck, he’s got great creativity and vision. As a defenseman, the hardest part is handling the play in your own end and handling the rush coming at you against the best players in the world. He looks the part right now. He’s sorta dominating the Western Hockey League. Time will tell when we get to a training camp. He looked pretty good this year. Next year we’ll get him signed hopefully and then you can play him up to 10 NHL games to sort of test that out. We’ll see. We like his progress from the draft till now.”

On whether the scouting staff prepares differently with the prospects of having an early draft pick

“No, people ask that. [Vice president of amateur scouting] Mark Kelley says it best, you have to know the top end of the draft, even if you’re picking 30th. You have to understand which players might be available if you’re in a position to move up. If you can maybe move up from 30 to 12, you can’t just figure out on the fly who you like. You have to know that top end. I don’t know if we’re preparing any differently based on the standings. We’ve always spent a fair amount of time getting to know guys we weren’t going to draft in previous years. We’re taking the same approach this year.”

(Top photo: Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images)