The Final Cut is the Deepest

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The Sedins and Ryan Kesler won't miss you Andrew, but us Hawks fans sure will.

Two years ago pretty much to the day, the Blackhawks decided to make a splash in free agency signing Cristobal Huet and Brian Campbell to huge contracts. Knowledgeable Hawks fans realized that in two years, when the contracts for Jonathan Toews, Patrick Kane and Duncan Keith were up that the Hawks were going to have to lose some pieces of their team.

Fast forward to the present and that’s exactly what has happened. The Blackhawks completed (for the most part) making moves to get under the 2010-11 salary cap with the trades of Kris Versteeg to Toronto and Andrew Ladd to Atlanta. Both players will be missed without question. Versteeg, while extremely frustrating at times, is gritty and a very solid NHL player capable of slotting in on a 2nd or 3rd line for a team. Ladd is the type of player that winning teams have. A player whose contributions are rarely noticed on a boxscore, but contributions that are always noticed by teammates and coaches. The guy is a winner plain and simple.

It’s easy to sit here and blame Campbell and Huet’s contracts as the reason the Hawks have lost Dustin Byfuglien, Andrew Ladd and Kris Versteeg in the last 2 weeks. It’s partially accurate too. Or we can blame the RFA fiasco last summer on forcing this upon the Hawks. This is also partially accurate. Some fault definitely lies with the Hawks for creating this mess they were in.

Before you completely lay the blame there however, remember that if Campbell doesn’t come back early from injury, the Hawks might have been out to Nashville in Round 1. Remember the fact that if certain players aren’t slightly overpaid on RFA contracts when they were signed (Bolland, Sharp, Versteeg, Buff, etc), the Hawks are not hoisting the Stanley Cup. The Hawks took some risks to try to win the Stanley Cup before the Cap Armegeddon hit, and they did it. As I've said many times before, I take the tradeoff of some cap problems down the road if it means we've hoisted the Cup any day of the week.

The salary cap is what it is. Every team has to play by the same rules and I can accept that. The invoking of the salary cap has allowed teams from all over the league to be competitive. This, coupled with certain on-ice rule changes and an influx of charismatic young stars has the NHL is the best position it’s been in for a very long time.

As I said at the top, we all knew this day was coming. Knowing that it’s coming doesn’t make it any easier to digest, but here we are. What’s funny is that Huet’s contract isn’t the main reason (because he’s going to Europe or the minors and will be off the books regardless) the Hawks had to dump Versteeg and Ladd in the last couple days. The knockout blow for the Hawks was the fact that roughly $4M in bonuses payable to Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane (for winning the Conn Smythe and finishing top 10 in points respectively) is deducted off next year’s cap for the Hawks, leaving them at $55.2M to work with when the rest of the league has $59.4M.

This is the only thing that irritates me about this situation. The Hawks are being punished for their players having success. I’m not going to get into an in depth salary cap and CBA discussion, but just think about that from a high level perspective there for a second. I understand how the bonus cushion works and if you use it in one year has to come off a future year’s cap. Fair enough. But the CBA should allow some sort of flexibility in how this penalty is applied. Maybe allowing teams to spread it out over two years (much like how buyouts work) is an idea to be explored. Because the Hawks players were successful, one of Buff or Versteeg and Ladd are not going to be on the Hawks roster next year. It’s a little frustrating to say the least.

Reality is though, that it is what it is (to steal a saying from my cousin) and the Hawks will have to move on. Who knows, maybe the NHL and NHLPA in the next round of CBA negotiations will look at what happened with the Hawks and how they had to dismantle their Stanley Cup team and figure out a way to minimize the penalty for being successful.

There’s no question that the Hawks will be a weaker team in 2010-11 than they were in 2009-10. Buff, Versteeg and Ladd were all contributors to the Hawks' success and will be missed. But I credit Stan Bowman for doing a pretty good job given a difficult situation. Bowman was able to accumulate a number of picks and solid prospects in return for these players, and in a manner of speaking sold high on each of his 3 assets.

The Hawks core is still one of the best in the league, if not the best. When your forwards consist of players like Toews, Kane, Sharp, Hossa, Bolland and your top 4 Dmen are Keith, Seabrook, Campbell and Hjalmarsson, you’re going to be alright. So it obviously isn’t all doom and gloom for Hawks fans. What the Hawks need is a couple of these kids to develop into solid contributors. They’re not going to be asked to be superstars for the Hawks. They are going to be asked to out there and do their job.

The Hawks do lose a bit of grit and toughness with the losses of Buff, Versteeg and Ladd, but this is where guys like Jake Dowell, Bryan Bickell and Kyle Beach will have an opportunity to contribute.

At the end of the day, there’s no sugar coating it. The Hawks will miss all three of those players next year and on behalf of Hawks fans everywhere we wish them nothing but the best. It’s important however not to lose sight of the fact that the Hawks will still be a good team and the future is still very bright. The next entry will be another stab at next year’s roster and the prospects that will be competing for jobs with the Hawks in the next year or two. I’m going to hold off a couple days on that to allow for additional chips to fall from the start of the unrestricted free agency period.