Gary Bettman announced at the league’s Board of Governors meeting Monday, that the salary cap for 2019-20 could rise as much as $3.5 million from this season’s ceiling of $79.5 million to $83 million. This development could be a big story this summer for a Blackhawks team that desperately needs to add pieces.
When NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman announced that the salary cap could allow as much as $3.5 million of room for teams to patrol the free agent market this coming summer, Blackhawks fans (with a little help from recent mainstream articles) all jumped on their internet devices and filled their Christmas shopping carts with Artemi Panarin sweaters.
Not realistic but, then again, when have sports fans ever been realistic or rational?
As we sit today, according to Puckpedia.com, the Blackhawks stand to have an estimated $20.8 million in cap space if the cap were to rise as speculated. Granted, this is with only 15 of the currently rostered players signed. Marcus Kruger, Chris Kunitz, Andreas Martinsen, Jan Rutta, Brandon Davidson and Cam Ward potentially all fall off the roster as unrestricted free agents while David Kampf, Brendan Perlini, and Gustav Forsling will be restricted free agents.
Other restricted free agents that will need to be addressed are Dylan Sikura, Blake Hillman, Victor Ejdsell, Anthony Louis, Jacob Nilsson, Matheson Iacopelli, Luke Johnson, Carl Dahlstrom, Anton Forsberg and Collin Delia. A couple of these names might affect the NHL roster, but most should not be of concern. AHL vets Jordan Schroeder, Andrew Campbell, and Tyler Sikura will become unrestricted free agents but, again, probably don’t figure into the pro roster.
What could an additional $3.5 million do for this franchise that is slowly drowning in a murky swamp of indecision and denial? It certainly should mean that they will make a big splash in the market, but it has been a long time since they went out and made a significant addition through free agency.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news but, despite what the pundits have been feeding you, the free agent market is not as plentiful as you might think. If free agency were to start today, it would look like a sea of big names, but that is not how NHL free agency works. Most big name free agents in the prime of their career re-sign with their team or get traded and sign extensions with their new team almost immediately.
The biggest names to potentially hit the market are Columbus Russians Sergei Bobrovsky and Artemi Panarin, Sharks defenseman Erik Karlsson, Senators forwards Mark Stone and Matt Duchene, Jordan Eberle, Buffalo’s Jeff Skinner down to players like Wayne Simmonds and Jacob Silfverberg. I agree that all of these names sound enticing but I would be surprised if half of them hit the true open market.
For this exercise, let’s assume that David Kampf, Brendan Perlini, and Gustav Forsling all re-sign and eat up around $4 million between them. Simple math brings you to about $16 million in cap space, their general manager cannot unload a contract or two. This is where I need to spit some truth. While spending $10 million a season for the next seven seasons on Artemi Panarin is logistically possible, it is not reasonable nor is it smart.
If Panarin is (reportedly) playing hardball with the Columbus Blue Jackets because he is not sure that is the city where he wants to spend the next eight years, he is certainly not interested in taking a “discount” to return to a team that is a shell of the one he left two years ago.
“But, Jeff, He has such great chemistry with Patrick Kane”
Sure, he did have that chemistry. He has chemistry with players in Columbus, too. He will have chemistry in his next city, as well. That is what dynamic star players do. Since his chemistry with Kane, he was blindsided by a surprise trade to a much smaller market, where he then blossomed into a bonafide NHL star and has (reportedly) decided that (despite playing for a team much closer to the Stanley Cup than the Blackhawks), he is not interested in hitching his camper to Columbus.
Did I miss anything?
It is pretty safe to assume that taking less money and coming back to a terrible Chicago organization to play second fiddle to Patrick Kane (who could potentially be here for almost the entirety of Panarin’s next contract deal) is not exactly ideal. He clearly wants to be a top 10 NHL star on his own. Say, for argument’s sake, that he was to take less money and gamble his future on this mess of a franchise.
Artemi Panarin does not take this team from basement dwellers to Stanley Cup potential. No one player does. Several layers need to be stripped off the onion to begin to build the team back up. Next season may, in fact, be just as bad as this one is going.
“But, hey! We got da bread man back guys!”
What does that John Tavares recruiting video look like? Do the Blackhawks add Panarin in on the stage, announcing the first overall pick at the 2020 NHL Entry Draft? Attending the draft lottery as the Blackhawks representative while Bill Daly announces, “The first overall pick in the 2020 NHL Entry Draft goes to…the Los Angeles Kings?”
Back to the most important question, though. Who is helping to keep the puck out of the net? Top four defensemen cost premium dollars. If the fantasy rings true, Stan Bowman spends (at least) $9 million on Panarin and then has to spend almost all of his remaining cap money on ONE defenseman. Probably an overpaid, serviceable, top four defenseman, because no one is getting Erik Karlsson or Jacob Trouba (whom you’d have to acquire through trade, or give an insanely high offer-sheet plus draft compensation) for $6 million a year.
If the Blackhawks are going to blow money on players, blow it on the filling the gaping holes in the lineup. Replace a few of the 5-6-7 level defensemen with some actual adults that can hold their own on both ends of the ice.
“We have Boqvist, Beaudin and Ian Mitchell. They are the future!”
Thank you, Whitney Houston, but those are all very young, very raw, smallish, offensive minded defensemen. Not a single team in this league is winning the Stanley Cup with four of their top six defensemen having one year or less of NHL experience, much less all of them being the same type of player to varying degrees. This is not a video game. The Blackhawks will be extremely lucky if just one of those three potential rookies can hold his own in the NHL next season.
This brings us all the way back to the remaining “clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right” now currently playing musical chairs in front of Corey Crawford. Duncan Keith, Brent Seabrook, Erik (no “D” in) Gustafsson, Gustav Forsling, Brandon Manning, Henri Jokiharju, Connor Murphy. Someone in this Mickey Mouse club has to go.
In fact, two or three need to go. This is what happens when you stockpile a bunch of very similar assets.
Obviously, Henri Jokiharju was drafted and hyped by the front office to remain in Chicago. Connor Murphy might “seem” bad but he is a young, versatile, cost controlled, relatively physical defenseman that will not get you killed in your own end. Dennis Gilbert might be able to develop into that type of player, eventually, but he is still trying to navigate the AHL.
Unless Stan Bowman can find a functional idiot of a GM, he is not going to be able to move Seabrook or Manning without sweetening a deal with a Dylan Sikura type player. Opinions of Sikura aside, the Blackhawks have a history of giving decent NHL players away for almost nothing, which is another annual event that needs to stop happening.
This leaves Keith, Gustafsson and Forsling. Try and find a dance partner for Keith at the deadline and get anything you can for the other two. These are the type of hard decisions that need to be made. If Stan Bowman is not the type of GM that can make this kind of shift in the organization happen, then he can hop on the plane with them to outer Mongolia, manana.