Blackhawks Salary Cap Situation Gets a Bad Grade (and I Have Many Thoughts)

[Chicago Blackhawks]

Blackhawks Salary Cap Situation Gets a Bad Grade (and I Have Many Thoughts)

Scott Maxwell at Daily Faceoff is ranking the salary cap situations for NHL teams. He has the Chicago Blackhawks ranked 31st in the league. But I have a few issues with his how and why for having the Blackhawks that low in the league.

Maxwell begins his explanation for the Blackhawks being ranked a low as they are with a seemingly big caveat:

The Chicago Blackhawks cap situation is a good example of how just because it looks bad doesn’t entirely mean that it is bad. A quick look at the deals they have signed and you’ll notice that there isn’t a lot of value to be found. But this is what a team’s cap sheet looks like when they haven’t quite nailed down a core and are mostly just trying to hit the salary floor with the best players that want to join them.

The first issue I’ll have with this is the part where he says “they haven’t quite nailed down a core.” The Blackhawks have clearly identified Alex Vlasic and Frank Nazar as part of their core based on their contracts. I think we all would say Connor Bedard, Artyom Levshunov and Sam Rinzel (at least) are among the “core” of the future of the Chicago Blackhawks. Just because four of those five players will skate the 2025-26 season on their entry-level contracts doesn’t mean the core has not yet been identified.

Perry Nelson-Imagn Images

His next two paragraphs feel like they contradict each other in some ways. I’ll put the part(s) that I have issue with in bold (with the player names, as usual):

When you’re using your salary cap space to take on bad deals (like Andre Burakovsky’s or Ilya Mikheyev’s) or retain salary for draft picks and prospects, it’s going to look uglier than it actually is, especially when none of those pieces is locked in long-term yet and the few that are have some room to grow. On top of that, Chicago is just so bad on the ice that it’s tanking the on-ice value of their players, which makes every contract look worse in my model.

If I have one complaint about the Blackhawks’ current process, they retain older talent a little bit more than a rebuilding team should. Sure, you want to have some veterans around to teach and support the young guys, but Chicago often punts on selling high on these players and instead re-signs them, only for them to not continue putting up that value on the ice. Jason Dickinson, Ryan Donato, Nick Foligno and Petr Mrazek are all examples of players that could have been traded when they had good value attached to them, but the Blackhawks chose to extend them instead. Mrazek may be the best example of the downside of this, as he ended up being dealt a year later for Joe Veleno, who Chicago proceeded to buy out this summer. It just feels like wasted asset management.

So… the books “look uglier than they actually are” because they don’t have players locked into long-term deals… but they “retain older talent longer than they should”?

He admits having veterans around to support and teach young players is a good idea. And it is. He also admits the Blackhawks need to get to the salary floor, a very real issue when you project to have so many players on ELCs. Having the right players around the young players and paying them maybe more than the open market might dictate because you value their leadership can be both a function of getting to the floor and wanting the right players in the room. And that’s the case I have made — and will continue to make — for guys like Foligno, Dickinson and Donato.

I’m not a fan of throwing the Mrázek trade under the bus as a “bad” deal, however. The Blackhawks made a big trade, sending Seth Jones to Florida, and acquired their future goaltender in the deal. Spencer Knight has the opportunity to be the man in Chicago for a long time. The Blackhawks also had Arvid Söderblom playing fairly well last year. So they accommodated Mrázek, who had been a good soldier since he was traded to Chicago — in a salary dump deal that got the Blackhawks into the first round and the pick they used to select Rinzel — and found him somewhere he could play. Don’t think for a second that a GM taking care of a veteran doesn’t get noticed in the room.

Also: the Blackhawks didn’t buy out Veleno this summer. They traded him to Seattle for Burakovsky, who might be a similar buy-low player like Mikheyev if he can get healthy and return to the form that got him the “bad deal” that necessitated the Kraken trading him away. That being said, the Blackhawks should have been able to do better in the Burakovsky trade than simply dumping Veleno.

(As an aside: while I appreciate and, to a point, can agree with the comment about the Blackhawks being “so bad on the ice that it’s tanking the on-ice value of their players,” I think Mikheyev’s 2024-25 season is counter to that line of argument. He played very well last season and might be the Blackhawks’ most intriguing trade chip this coming season.)

Kamil Krzaczynski-Imagn Images

Have the Blackhawks held onto Dickinson and Foligno too long? I don’t think so. Maybe they could have traded Dickinson during the 2023-24 season (in which he got votes for the Selke Trophy) and brought back good draft assets. But he’s the kind of guy the organization wants providing leadership in the room. And, to Maxwell’s point about not having players around for very long, Dickinson only got a two-year extension — something that could still easily be moved if the right deal presents itself.

Dickinson was banged up last year, and the Blackhawks needed to get to/stay above the floor, so moving him before the coming season likely didn’t make a lot of sense. They also didn’t have young players ready and able to take his spot at a solid third-line center. I’m still in wait-and-see mode entering this season to see if Ryan Greene can emerge as that guy before the 2026 NHL Trade Deadline. It’s possible. But Dickinson’s leadership still has immense value to the organization.

Overall, this is an interesting conversation that we’re going to continue to come back to time and time again until the Blackhawks have their core players making up the bulk of their cap space. But we aren’t there yet, and the NHL having a salary floor complicates roster construction for teams like the Blackhawks (and Sharks for that matter) who have to spend money while trying to turn over their roster.

At the end of the day, the Blackhawks have roughly $18.7M in available cap space (according to PuckPedia), which is the third-most in the NHL. The 2025-26 season will be a transition from the rebuild rosters made up of veterans making more money than maybe they should to get the Blackhawks to the floor to the next wave of prospects coming up and young players like Bedard and Nazar starting their second contracts. I’m going to be more concerned about how the Blackhawks navigate the cap in 3-5 years as they start writing extensions for the young core than I am right now.

2025 NHL TEAM SALARY CAP RANKINGS from @scotmaxw:

Teams #32-25

The worst situations in the league include rebuilding teams in the final years of cap hell and fringe playoff teams in danger of entering it:https://t.co/rTVvnvoeRy

— Daily Faceoff (@DailyFaceoff) August 27, 2025

Source: https://www.bleachernation.com/blac...on-gets-a-bad-grade-and-i-have-many-thoughts/