The Chicago Blackhawks have settled the pecking order of its front office with the hiring of Jaime Faulkner as president of business operations, the team announced Wednesday.

Danny Wirtz, who had served as interim president since John McDonough’s surprise firing in April, was named chief executive officer. General manager Stan Bowman retains that title but also has been elevated to president of hockey operations, solidifying his control over a department he already had a hand in.

The Hawks have had been reevaluating how they run the hockey and business sides of the franchise since COVID-19 shut down play in mid-March. They’ve since been more open about acknowledging the team is rebuilding in a public relations push.

Chairman Rocky Wirtz said in a statement: “Since (March), we have taken the steps and made those changes to put the pieces into place that will bring a new mindset and culture to the Chicago Blackhawks, that will lead us into the future.

“When Danny Wirtz agreed to serve as our interim president last spring, he set into motion a strategy, structure and plan that today, is one that all Blackhawks fans will be proud of.”

The Hawks have talked about having a new “vision” but haven’t gone into great detail. Bowman, Wirtz and Faulkner are scheduled to address media this week, and the latter two will talk to season ticket holders.

The Hawks cited Faulkner’s “experience in sports and entertainment with a focus on analytics and emerging technology” as a reason for her hiring and said she will focus on “advancing the fan experience and business model while generating new revenue.”

When the organization parted ways with McDonough, early speculation was that Bowman, who presided over a team that had fallen on hard times, would follow him out the door.

But the Hawks stood by Bowman and — thanks to a generous return-to-play format — the team made the postseason, winning a qualifying series against the Edmonton Oilers before bowing out to the Vegas Golden Knights in the first round.

Bowman irked fans and perhaps some veteran players when he cut off negotiations with goaltender Corey Crawford, a two-time Stanley Cup champion. It was a tacit acknowledgement the Hawks were rebuilding before later making a public admission.

The promotion shows the Wirtz family is doubling down on its bet Bowman can quickly return the Hawks, who won three titles under his watch, to prominence. They have a talented young core with some Cup holdovers, but questions remain about offensive playmakers and at goaltender.

The Hawks said of Bowman in an updated bio as part of Wednesday’s announcement: “During his time at the helm of the hockey operations department, Bowman has secured the team’s core talent with long-term contract extensions, rebuilt the club’s prospect depth with multiple acclaimed draft classes and acquired many key roster pieces through trades and free-agent signings.”

Faulkner is married to Colin Faulkner, Chicago Cubs executive vice president of sales and marketing and chief commercial officer for the team. The couple has five children.

Jaime Faulkner is the founding CEO of the E15 Group, a business strategy company that applies analytics to sports and entertainment hospitality. Faulkner cited among other projects helping program Chicago’s Plate at the United Center, “selecting all the food partners that came in. We run a number of analytics to support actual game-day operations,” she said Wednesday in a private Zoom call with season-ticket holders and corporate partners.

“We at E15 also used the United Center to pilot a lot of new technology that now you would see if you went into a lot of the other venues across the country. Our work is everywhere. We’re behind the scenes, but you don’t know it.”

She added that there was new technology set to debut before the pandemic shut down sports in March.

Faulkner said she’ll work to make the fan experience, from home to the stadium and back, as easy and “frictionless” as possible.

She also has worked on sports betting projects for sportsbooks that will make their debut later, and it was clear from her and Danny Wirtz that betting will be play a larger role in the game-day experience.

“If this provides new ways fans can watch, experience and engage with the sport, it offers a tremendous opportunity to grow our game,” Wirtz said. “You couple that with the high upload speeds of 5G building like the United Center and some of the technology that’s coming from the NHL around player tracking and puck tracking, you open up a whole new world of data that can be shared with fans, and it can ultimately be bet against.

“So there’s a lot of exciting things in this area. It’s a new frontier. I think we’re going to see it evolve year on year as it goes along here.”

In the big picture, Wirtz said Faulkner, a self-proclaimed “data geek,” “would be someone who could really enhance this culture. We wanted to be more inclusive, we want to be learning-driven, and those cultural elements are really underpinning all the exciting strategic things we want to do.

“But we have to get the culture right, and we have to evolve the culture to be more in that change mindset.

“Jaime was clearly the leader we were looking for.”