Bowman sure knows how to throw a pre-party.

On Friday, the Blackhawks GM thrusted into full-blown activity, completing two separate deals including core roster players. Bowman began by dealing away veteran Niklas Hjalmarsson to the Arizona Coyotes in exchange for defenseman Connor Murphy and forward Laurent Dauphin. Not long after, Bowman shipped out Artemi Panarin and Tyler Motte to the Columbus Blue Jackets, re-acquiring former Blackhawk Brandon Saad in the deal.

It looked like this:

*image courtesy of Capfriendly.com.

As we know, there really isn’t much difference between a fifth- and sixth-round pick. We’ll declare the exchange of a 2018 fifth-rounder from the Blackhawks and a 2017 sixth-rounder from Columbus a wash and keep moving.

So, how did Bowman do? Was he able to bring meaningful change to a roster that was mercilessly bounced from the first round of the playoffs? Was Bowman able to achieve financial or contractual goals? How do the newest Blackhawks compare statistically with Panarin, Motte, and Hjalmarsson?

For answers, we’ll turn to the data.

Younger, more stable, yet the contention window continues to close

Financially, the deals did not do much to alleviate the Blackhawks’ annual cap crunch, saving the team only $250,000 overall. But the deals for Murphy and Saad do give the Blackhawks some cost certainty, with Murphy signed for five more seasons and Saad inked for another four years.

And Bowman did do well to get a little younger. Murphy and Saad are each only 24-years-old, which is probably peak age.

Cost certainty and a more youthful roster sound really good, prima facie.

But when it comes to pure roster talent, the Blackhawks had a rough day.

Let’s take a look at how the roster performed overall last year.

*to view and interact with this viz, click here.

Goals above replacement, commonly referred to as GAR, is a single number valuation of all the ways a player contributes on the ice – shots, goals, assists, shot suppression, penalty taking and penalty draws, faceoffs, etc… To read more about the details behind this single number value, read stat-creator Dawson Sprigings’ piece here.

By this measure, the Blackhawks lost their fourth and fifth most impactful skaters from last season (they also lost Motte, who wasn’t a major factor at the NHL level last year). In total, the team parted with Hjalmarsson’s defense-powered GAR score of 10.3, Panarin’s offense-driven 9.8 GAR, and Tyler Motte’s 0.7 GAR. All told, 20.8 goals above replacement were dispatched in the duo of deals.

Let’s see how the Blackhawks’ roster looks now:

Saad slides into the top spot after posting a 12.7 GAR last season with the Blue Jackets. His even-strength offense contributions are excellent. Saad’s only sore spot was a negative value in penalty draws, meaning that the still-young forward doesn’t induce enough penalties against while he’s on the ice.

Murphy managed a 4.1 total GAR value last year, powered by a 2.1 score for even-strength defense. Murphy did enough last season to suggest he can play competent, safe minutes as a second-pair defenseman.

Dauphin, an add-on coming to the Blackhawks in the Hjalmarsson-Murphy deal, managed an overall negative value in GAR. He contributed less than Jordin Tootoo did for the Blackhawks last year and, barring some significant change, will likely play few minutes in a deep depth role.

Overall, the Blackhawks acquired 16.8 goals above replacement from last year (which drops to 15.7 when Dauphin’s -1.1 GAR is included) in exchange for the 20.8 goals above replacement that left via Hjalmarsson and Panarin.

Statistically, it’s a clear loss in the short run for the Blackhawks, leaving approximately five goals above replacement on the table in these two deals in exchange for young players with longer contracts.

But we can extend the individual analysis to see how much drop-off to expect at the team level.

Using a team playoff probability model developed by hockey stat guru Dom Galamini, we can compare the pre- and post-trade versions of the Blackhawks’ roster.

First, pre-trade:

Due to a lack of sample size for some of the Blackhawks’ depth players, the line combos here (based on the last 10 games played courtesy of Left Wing Lock) are not quite accurate. Positions do not matter in the model but TOI is a factor. I’ve made some artificial line combinations to manage the fact that Tanner Kero and John Hayden did not play enough during the season to be included.

As the roster (mostly) stood, the Blackhawks were not a safe bet to make the playoffs last year. The team owned a 49 percent playoff probability and performed like a team that had just scratched their way into the playoffs, getting swept out by the Nashville Predators in round one.

Here’s how the lineup looks post-trade:

In order to make the comparison, I simply subbed Murphy into Hjalmarsson’s spot and Saad into Panarin’s side (though I moved Saad to Toews’ wing). Pending UFAs were left in place to isolate the impact of the newly-acquired Blackhawks.

And it’s not good.

Murphy and Saad’s inclusion on the roster leads to a 12 percent drop in playoff likelihood for the team, down from an almost fifty-fifty playoff chance to a 37 percent mark. That’s very troubling.

Some concluding thoughts…

As usual, Bowman is stuck spending his summer struggling with the salary cap. Friday’s deals only freed $250,000 but Saad and Murphy do have longer contract terms. Each player is also younger, which should theoretically help prop open the Blackhawks’ Cup contention window a little longer.

But statistically, the trades look very poor. Murphy and Saad do not offer enough to offset the value lost with Hjalmarsson and Panarin leaving town. The team’s playoff probability took a hit with these moves and, barring some slick maneuvering this summer, the Hawks won’t find themselves in contention for the Stanley Cup in 2017-18. Instead, the Blackhawks could find themselves in tough to make the playoffs at all.

(Top image: Brad Rempel/USA TODAY Sports)