A precursor?

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Could a deal with Niemi be close?

On Thursday afternoon the Chicago Blackhawks sent Marty Reasoner to Florida for Jeffrey Taffe. Reasoner, acquired in the Dustin Byfuglien deal, ended his short time as a Blackhawk within a month of arriving in Chicago.

I’m sure that when the trade for Reasoner was made, Stan Bowman envisioned that Reasoner would be a poor-man’s version of John Madden for the 4th line, but at a bargain price of $1.15M. However, with other developments this offseason, it has become apparent that the Hawks do not have the luxury of paying $1.15M to a 4th line center this year due to their salary cap constraints.

I’d be lying if I said I knew a lot about Taffe. He’s bounced between a number of AHL teams and the big league in the Blues, Coyotes and Panthers organizations. His cap hit is $550K and he did play 21 games for the Panthers last year, so he may be a candidate for a 4th line job in Chicago next year. He’ll probably compete against Jake Dowell for the 4th line center spot. Should he lose the battle to Dowell the Hawks will waive Taffe and if he clears waivers he’d be assigned to Rockford.

So why make this deal today if you’re Bowman? Well, looking at the calendar we’re one week away from Antii Niemi’s arbitration date of July 29th. As outlined already on this blog, a way that the Hawks could free up some extra cap space for their 2010-11 roster is by getting rid of Reasoner’s $1.15M cap hit and replacing him with someone making $500K or so.

Am I of the opinion that this extra $600K saved is all going to Niemi? Not entirely, as this money could represent the extra cushion the Hawks need to carry for injuries next year, or for signing another Dman, etc. But given the timing of this deal, I think it’s more than likely that this deal has a lot to do with Niemi’s upcoming arbitration.

As outlined before on this blog, $2.75M was the magic number for Niemi. With the trade of Reasoner , the Hawks could potentially go to $3M or so on Niemi. Perhaps the Hawks can get Niemi signed for more than one year given the extra cap room. I’m sure Bowman would like to avoid the headache of trying to re-sign Niemi after next season if he could.

It remains to be seen whether Bowman elects to go to arbitration and use this extra cap space as a bit of a “cushion” in terms of how high the Hawks can go on the arbitrator's amount, or he uses this space to get a deal done before July 29th. Personally, I believe that the Reasoner trade indicates that there may be a solution to getting Niemi signed before July 29th. The next couple of days should be pretty interesting on the Niemi front.