These guys weren't hungover the next day..or week.
Parts 2 thru 5 above
The party has been going on in the city of Chicago and for Blackhawks fans everywhere for the last couple of weeks. Deservedly so I might add. When your team hasn’t won the Stanley Cup since 1961, well you deserve to enjoy every moment of the celebration.
Like pretty much every morning after a good bender, you have to deal with the hangover. Unfortunately for the Stanley Cup Champion Chicago Blackhawks (damn that feels good to say that), they forgot to take their Gatorade the night before to help deal with the morning after.
I’m referring to the 2010-11 salary cap mess that a number of knowledgeable Hawks fans saw coming 2 years ago when ludicrous contracts were handed out by Dale Tallon to Brian Campbell, Cristobal Huet for starters, and then overpayments (albeit slight) were made to restricted free agents Kris Versteeg, Cam Barker and Dave Bolland last offseason. While Tallon deserves a lot of credit for putting together the roster that won the Stanley Cup, he also deserves a lot of the blame for the mess the Hawks are in.
As reported by a number of news outlets, the Hawks are currently at roughly at $57 million spent on 14 players for the 2010-11 season. After the NHLPA voted yesterday to take the cap escalator, the Salary Cap for next season is expected to be roughly between $59 and $59.5M. Obviously the Hawks don’t have a lot of wiggle room and need to make some moves.
I could spend a lot of time going through the legalities of the cap, but to be honest, not even the best analysts can decipher what happens in certain situations. There’s still a lot of grey to deal with and only those inside the NHL offices know for sure. There’s a number of things that can impact what the Hawks cap limit is next year and I’ll touch on those later. This entry will be set out as follows:
1) The lay of the land – What players are under contract, who’s a UFA, who’s an RFA
2) What’s the Hawks’ 2010-11 Salary Cap number and who do we want to keep?
3) Current issues and Assumptions
4) Scenarios
5) Future
The players the Hawks have under contract are:
• Jonathan Toews - $6.3M
• Patrick Kane - $6.3M
• Marian Hossa - $5.25M
• Patrick Sharp - $3.9M
• David Bolland - $3.38M
• Kris Versteeg - $3.08M
• Dustin Byfuglien - $3.0M
• Tomas Kopecky - $1.2M
• Troy Brouwer - $1.03M
• Brian Campbell - $7.14M
• Duncan Keith - $5.54M
• Brent Seabrook - $3.5M
• Brent Sopel - $2.33M
• Cristobal Huet - $5.63M
The following players are unrestricted free agents: Kim Johnsson, John Madden, Nick Boynton, Adam Burish
The following player are restricted free agents: Andrew Ladd, Ben Eager, Antii Niemi, Niklas Hjalmarsson, Jordan Hendry, Colin Fraser
There are also players who played for Rockford who are going to be part of this discussion, but I’ll get to them and their status in part 3.
So what exactly is the Hawks salary cap number for next year?
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