Hawks to announce signing of Keith, Kane & Toews

The blackhawks have called a press conference for later today where it is expected they will announce the signings of Duncan Keith to a 13 year deal worth $72M and Patrick Kane & Jonathan Toews to 5 year deals, each worth $31.5M, according to CBC reports.

Keith’s deal will be an annual salary cap hit of $5.54, with the Toews and Kane deals each costing $6.3 million against the cap.

That leaves the hawks with a committed team payroll of $60,682,874 for next season already, with only 15 players signed. That $60M doesn't include John Madden, Nik Hjalmarsson, Andrew Ladd, Ben Eager, Colin Fraser, Jordan Hendry or Anti Niemi who are either UFAs or RFAs at the end of this season.

Clearly, Stan Bowman will have a lot of work to do to clear out enough cap room to sign Hjalmarsson who arguably is the hawks 3rd best dman, Niemi a promising young backup who potentially could take over the starting job at some point, Ladd who brings a lot of abrasiveness & cup winning experience despite his young age, and essentially their entire 4th line, which has provided much needed energy as well as chipped in with some timely offense.

In addition to signing most if not all of those players, Bowman has to also leave enough cap room to resign Seabrook, Byfuglien & Brouwer after next season when they become RFAs...

and given current league attendance figures, there is a real possibility that the salary cap will go down from its current $56.8M!!

Sopel will clearly be among the first casualties with his $2.333M cap hit each of the next two years, and I suspect Barker with his $3.083M cap hit for the next 3 years despite averaging less than 15 minutes per game (including over 2 mins of pp time) will be next in line for dumping - they simply make too much money for what they bring to the team. Barker should realize a greater return given his age & upside, and perhaps yield a first round pick. Earlier reports suggested that in order for the hawks to find someone to take Sopel's contract off their hands they would have to "throw-in" a 2nd round pick - a steep price to pay on top of a bad contract.

If they move those two dmen (and replace their minutes with cheaper, experienced veteran defensemen - Chris Chelios anyone?), that might get them down to about $56M for 13 to 15 players - which obviously means more moves of dumping larger salary for cheaper (read not as good) players.

Hossa, Campbell & Huet (& Bolland) are virtually untradeable due to their contracts, (to now be joined by Keith) which leaves Sharp, Byfuglien &/or Versteeg. I doubt the hawks want to move any of those players, who each bring considerable, unique value to the table. I suspect if push came to shove, they may just bite the bullet on Huet, rather than one or more of those forwards, especially if they think Niemi is ready to step up and assume a larger role.

What seems clear is that a valuable UFA like Madden can't be resigned unless he's willing to take a dramatic pay cut, and no new UFAs can be brought in.

This team will have several new, younger, cheaper players on the roster next season replacing more expensive, experienced & better players and as a result won't be nearly as deep (or likely as good) a team.

The reasons for Dale Tallon's dismissal should be coming into much clearer focus for those who couldn't understand that move when it happened. That said, Stan Bowman, as assistant GM and responsible for cap matters clearly had a say in the Huet, Campbell & Hossa contracts and has to take some responsibility for the cap mess he finds himself in.