I’m not going to lie here, the deals the Blackhawks made this past Friday made me meltdown briefly. First we saw that long-time Chicago Blackhawk Niklas Hjalmarsson had been traded to the Arizona Coyotes for 24 year old blue-liner Connor Murphy and 22 year old center Laurent Dauphin. My knee jerk reaction to this was genuine shock because I thought we just cap-dumped one of the best defensive defenseman in the NHL. Then seemingly 30 seconds later, Elliotte Friedman dropped an absolute bomb saying that the finishing touches were being put on a Panarin/Saad swap. At this point I went into a full on meltdown and made the irrational conclusion that Stan is blowing it up (dumb, I know). You have to cut me some slack here though, Hjalmarsson had been a trade candidate since the end of the SCF, but his return made me think we were purely just trying to get some cap flexibility, especially considering how team-friendly his contract was. And then trading Panarin, someone who has had such great success with this team, for a familiar face in Brandon Saad, made it seem like Stan was desperately trying to get back to the good ‘ole days. Don’t get me wrong, Brandon Saad is a fantastic hockey player, but this one was initially a head scratcher for sure, and it required some serious digestion.

Now that some time has passed, and things have started to settle, I am very much confident that Stan did the right thing here. Trading a core member of a team that won 3 cups in less than a decade is never easy (even if this isn’t the first time he’s had to do it), but our current cap situation combined with all of our question marks at D made this a must. Behind Duncan Keith, Hammer has been the Hawks’ most consistent defensemen in terms of playing at a high level night in and night out. This makes it very tempting to keep him aboard, but it also makes him more attractive to other teams in a trade scenario, especially those in the market defense. At 30 years of age and under contract for 2 more years at 4.1M per, someone who plays at the level that Hjalmarsson does should command a very solid return, and that is what I believe we got here. Connor Murphy is someone that Stan admittedly has been watching for a while now, and when Stan has his eye one someone, you can bet they’re a special player. His ability to evaluate talent has brought players such as Richard Panik, Andrew Shaw, and Brandon Saad to Chicago, and he seems to be very high on Connor Murphy. Recently a captain for Team USA, Murphy has shown his ability to take on a solid load of minutes as a top-pair defensemen and has #intangibles off the charts. Not to mention, he is only commanding $3.85M a year for the next 5 years. To have a talent like Murphy for 5 more years gives Stan a little more stability and makes circumventing the salary cap a little less stressful. I don’t really know too much about Dauphin but from the looks of it, he could slide into a 3rd/4th line forward role very nicely. Maybe even fill the void the Kruger might eventually leave. The main goal of this deal was to get younger and cheaper on defense, something that is clearly a concern for the Blackhawks. So while the loss of Hammer stings, this move provides a bit more stability at defense for the coming years. The Jan Rutta signing, the Kempny extension, trading for Murphy, and then drafting Henri Jokiharju makes it clear that Stan is committed to bolstering the Blackhawks defense that has been so pivotal in each Stanley Cup run.

The Panarin/Saad deal seems to be mutually beneficial for both parties, as Columbus, who has a surplus of two-way forwards, was looking to add a little more offensive firepower and they got a pure scorer in Panarin. Chicago needed to soften the blow of losing Marian Hossa while also keeping that offensive potency, and Saad fits that to a T. The Hawks will feel the loss of the Breadman as his chemistry with Patrick Kane was something we haven’t seen before. But Kane has the ability to form chemistry with everyone around him, so any decrease in scoring should only be marginal at most. It’s looking like Nick Schmaltz will slide into RW on that 2nd line with Anisimov and Kane, a group that hasn’t played together before but looks promising. Schmaltz is a playmaker and has an incredibly high hockey IQ. Being at such a young age and being under Kane’s wing should expedite his development, and if Anisimov can become a little more reliable at the dot, this line could be deadly.

Having Saad step in is so beneficial for the Hawks for a couple of reasons. Like I said, Saad has such a great two-way game and he should ease the pain of losing veteran winger Marian Hossa, and at the same time, he is a better offensive talent with incredible speed. Additionally, re-adding Saad into that top line with Toews should bump up Toews’ production as well. After losing Saad for two years, we saw a significant dip in Toews’ production. It has been said that maybe if we were able to keep Saad after 2015, Toews would’ve stayed on track. Well, we got him back, so now we’ll get to see. I’m not going to go out and say definitively that we’ll see a bump in his production, but those two seemed to enjoy playing together as they have been integral parts of two Stanley Cup runs, so this addition can only help. Also, as I’m sure you have seen before, the money just works. We had Panarin under contract for 2 more years with a $6M cap hit. Instead, now we have Saad with essentially the same cap hit with 2 additional years of control. Saad is more cost-controlled, he is proven to be a fit with this team, and he has the playoff experience that Panarin did not, something that hurt the Blackhawks the last 2 years.

As it stands, Chicago is still approximately $1.4M over the cap. The inevitable departure of Kruger should help with that, but even so, more moves are to be made. The next few weeks should get very interesting as Stan could possibly make another blockbuster deal, but what has been done so far is something that was necessary and should make Blackhawks fans a little more confident going into next year.