Tomorrow is Aug. 16, and many Blackhawk fans know all too well what that means.

In yet another case of something that happens every once in a while (though perhaps not as often as one might expect), a former college player has decided he doesn't want to play for the team that drafted him, and will instead hit the open market if that club cannot sign him before the end of Aug. 15.

As far as the Blackhawks are concerned, they have basically no chance of signing former Boston College star and 2010 first-round pick Kevin Hayes before that date.

There have been a lot of reasons for this decision by Hayes advanced, and a few of them sound fairly credible. He's a right wing, for one thing, and the Blackhawks have more than enough help on that side between Patrick Kane, Marian Hossa, Kris Versteeg, and Ben Smith. Further, Chicago had previously drafted Hayes's older brother Jimmy (a Toronto second-rounder) who spent a few seasons toiling in the Blackhawks system, not really getting a prolonged shot at the NHL, before being traded to Florida last season. Depending upon whom you believe, the divorce might not have been that amicable.

There's also the matter of Kevin Hayes probably feeling like he deserves at least a half-decent shot at the NHL, given that he torched college hockey for 65 points in 40 games this past season, playing alongside Hobey Baker winner Johnny Gaudreau, who had the single most impressive college season since Paul Kariya put up 100 points in 39 games in the early 1990s.

Hayes, in fact, should have been a Hobey finalist along with his linemate, because his 65 points were second only to Gaudreau's in the whole country, but for the Western contingent of college hockey voters having a hard-on for now-Kings prospect Nic Dowd, who had 25 fewer points than Hayes.

The Blackhawks, though, weren't going to give him that shot, because of the depth reasons listed above, and because they're already in a bit of a cap crunch (insofar as they're already over the limit). And so it was that Hayes has always appeared likely to try to move on to another team by simply waiting out the CBA's signing period for graduated college players. The reports basically all summer out of Chicago have screamed, “This kid isn't signing here.”

So the question becomes which team is likely to sign him, and obviously it's tough to nail down the answer.

The long-running favorite in the minds of many is Calgary, which long ago drafted and this spring signed both of Hayes's linemates, Gaudreau and center Bill Arnold. Hayes has, in the past, called the two players his best friends.

It's difficult to put into words just how badly these three players, playing together for the vast majority of this past season, torched college hockey. The stats themselves tell a pretty simple story: In the 26 of BC's 40 games they played as linemates, the three combined for 54-70-124. Absolutely ludicrous production from three guys who were probably in the top six players in all of college hockey last season. And the thing is, it would be easy to dismiss any of their production as being the result of Gaudreau simply being awe-inspiring (he is), but they actually worked exceptionally well together overall.

Gaudreau was certainly the creative dynamo who could do things no one else could. Arnold was the steadfast rock of two-way hockey who enabled the free-wheeling style of his two linemates. And Hayes used a completely revamped game — following a career-threatening injury at the end of 2012-13 that required a few surgeries — to be the real skull-cracker of the set, not with simple physical hockey, but because he just skated at teams and then went through them and scored.

In fact, another reason Hayes wasn't a Hobey finalist was because of the impression among those who didn't see BC very often was that his scoring this season was Gaudreau-driven. And while playing with the best player in NCAA hockey over the last two decades or so doesn't hurt, those who saw Hayes a lot last year — for me, it was 15 times live — know that wasn't the case. Even before they were put together on Dec. 6, Hayes put up a “mere” 21 points in 14 games by lugging inferior linemates to success. Thus, with Gaudreau, his points per game went up by just 0.19, a little less than 13 percent. Point being: He was a star no matter who he played with.

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