Comments on: Plenty of salary cap headaches remain for the Blackhawks

By: Adam

Adam — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 13:35:06 +0000

The Hawks HAD to keep Hjalmarsson. They needed to keep their top 2 Forward Lines, and Top 2 Bluelines together. Bolland and Sharp are both a part of that “Red Wings-esque” core, so they won’t be going anywhere. Guys are going to have to step up from Rockford to fill out the roster, but overall I think they are going to be just fine. It looks like the teams are headed to Arbitration on Niemi so we’ll see how that goes, but even if they miss out on Niemi the Hawks will be solid with their top two D pairs to clean out the front.

By: David

David — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 22:08:13 +0000

I think it was good to keep Hjalmarsson. As said above, he is valuable. As weak as their bottom pair will be, imagine if one of the young guys or old journeymen had to step up to play with the second pair. They need to drop one of: Niemi, Sharp, or Bolland. I say Niemi, then put out a strong team in front of a cheap goalie. Are we confident enough in Niemi that he could, for an entire year, adequately support an even weaker (no Patrick Sharp) team?

By: David

David — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 22:07:20 +0000

By: David

David — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 22:06:40 +0000

By: Mike Chen

Mike Chen — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 18:58:21 +0000

Duncan Keith, Brent Seabrook, Brian Campbell and Niklas Hjalmarsson be so good that the team could camouflage a weak bottom third on the blueline
No, because Campbell’s a defensive liability. Hjalmarsson gets more props for covering Campbell and letting him be creative, but that leads to at least one mad rush back per game. Sopel was a solid penalty killer, and they’ll really miss him there. It’s going to be really, really interesting as the season plays out, but maybe one of Chicago’s prospects will step up and make us all look dumb.