Blackhawks topple Habs for 11th straight win
The Blackhawks ran their winning streak to 11 straight games. (USATSI)
The Chicago Blackhawks were supposed to take a step back this year. It wasn’t going to be a big one. They were still going to be a playoff team, but would they be favored to defend their title? Not after losing so many contributors from last year’s title team that included three top-six forwards, a top-four defenseman and a series of strong role players. Well, about that…
Thanks to a 5-3 win over the Montreal Canadiens Sunday night, the Blackhawks earned their 11th consecutive victory. It matched a franchise record set back in 2013 when the team was busy padding a record that would give them the Presidents Trophy as the regular-season champion en route to another Stanley Cup title. It also helped propel them further into first place in both the Central Division and Western Conference.
When the 2015-16 streak began on Dec. 29, the Blackhawks were in wild card position. They trailed first-place Dallas by 13 points in the Central Division standings. Thanks to 11 straight wins and a recent stumble by the Stars, the Blackhawks are three points ahead of the Central field.
If you’re a Western Conference general manager, you have to be shaking your head. The salary cap is supposed to even the playing field. When the Blackhawks got squeezed by a lower-than-expected cap the same year Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane‘s new $10.5 million annual cap hits kicked in, they had to shed key players. That meant the likes of Brandon Saad, Patrick Sharp, Brad Richards and Johnny Oduya, would all have to go after helping Chicago win the Stanley Cup. That should have bloodied them a little, right? Apparently not.
Those players, plus Kris Versteeg and mid-season acquisition Antoine Vermette all had to be replaced and the Blackhawks didn’t have the cap space to replace them with comparable players. But even as Saad, Sharp, Versteeg and Oduya are all on pace to have better seasons with their new teams than they did with Chicago last year, Chicago managed to replace them well enough to maintain the level of competitiveness that puts them in the conversation as a Stanley Cup contender once again.
Here is how they’re doing it.
1. Patrick Kane
The biggest reason the Blackhawks have been able to stomach the losses from a scoring perspective is that Kane is scoring at a level the league hasn’t seen since 2006-07. With two more points Sunday, a goal and an assist, Kane leads the NHL with 69 points through 48 games.
The Blackhawks’ leading scorer all of last season was Jonathan Toews. He had 66 points in 81 games. Kane is already three points better than that and there’s 34 games left to play in the regular season. Meanwhile, Kane’s 29 goals have him one away from matching his career-high in that category. He’s 17 points from matching his career-best season during which he had 88 points.
The Blackhawks have scored 139 goals as a team this year. Kane has had a hand in 49 percent of those goals. He has 26 more points than linemate and next closest Blackhawk Artemi Panarin and nearly double captain Jonathan Toews’ 35 points. There isn’t a player in the NHL that means more to his team’s scoring attack than Kane does to the Blackhawks’.
2. Corey Crawford is having a career year
Often viewed as the weak link on a good team, a designation that has often been unfairly hung on the goaltender, Crawford has been the team’s second best player. Even when the Hawks struggled at various points of this season, Crawford was very good.
He now owns a 26-10-2 record, .929 save percentage and 2.17 goals-against average. Crawford has also picked up six shutouts, which leads the league. Our own Adam Gretz took a good look at Crawford’s season to date last week and it’s worth another gander as it details how good the Blackhawks netminder has been this year.
There are several good candidates for the Vezina Trophy this year, but Crawford is right in the mix. Concerns over defensive depth or if the Blackhawks lost too much scoring from last season have been rendered moot by Crawford’s play this season.
3. Undrafted free agent gems are providing big contributions
As we noted before, the Blackhawks had to replace a ton of players and had to do it on the cheap. There are a few ways to do that.
One is to find veteran players that fit a role that are willing to join a team for cheaper than they’re worth a la Brad Richards last season. That wasn’t a great option this year, though, aside from bringing back Michal Rozsival at a bargain basement price.
Another option is to hope that recent draft picks have matured and developed enough to earn full-time roles. That happened with Teuvo Teravainen and more recently appears to be happening with Phillip Danault.
But the other way more and more teams have been able to do this is by finding undrafted free agents that are still young and have potential. Those players are still beholden to the entry-level contract system, meaning they’ll have to play on sub-$1 million contracts. That’s a great way to massage the cap.
The Blackhawks hit some major home runs in this category. The grand salami, however, is Artemi Panarin ($812,500 against the cap), who had a bunch of pro experience in the KHL and was still 23 years old when he signed his contract. He is the team’s second-leading scorer and the Calder Trophy front-runner with 43 points in 48 games. Panarin has been a perfect linemate for Kane and the two have brought the best in each other.
The other two particularly helpful UFA signings are Trevor van Riemsdyk ($925,000), who joined the team last season, and Erik Gustafsson ($667,500), who actually was drafted by Edmonton but was never signed. Chicago plucked him from the Swedish Hockey League this summer. The two young defensemen helped mitigate Chicago’s depth problem on the blue line with better-than-expected play.
Van Riemsdyk has filled the top-four hole left by Oduya’s departure and is growing into the role. After being part of the Stanley Cup run last year, he had some experience to lean on heading into this season and it looks like it paid off. Gustafsson has won favor with head coach Joel Quenneville thanks to solid play in just 15 games so far this year. He’s a great option as a bottom-pairing guy to take the pressure off of and give breaks to aging veterans Michal Rozsival and Rob Scuderi. He already has eight assists.
The team has also gotten contributions from undrafted UFA Dennis Rasmussen ($575,000), who has appeared in 21 games this season and has six points. Those kind of players supplement the team’s prospect pool on low-risk contracts and all four of them are already more than earning their keep.
4. The team’s core remains ridiculously strong
The key component to the Blackhawks’ success over the last seven years has been their commitment to core players and doing whatever they can to keep them together. They had to shed Sharp, who was one of the seven players that had won three Stanley Cups in six years with the Hawks, last summer. Saad looked like he’d be a potential addition to the core, but he had to be traded when the Blackhawks couldn’t afford to keep him.
That still left Kane, captain Jonathan Toews – who scored twice against Montreal and is on the cusp of his ninth consecutive 20-plus goal season – Duncan Keith, Brent Seabrook, Niklas Hjalmarsson and Marian Hossa as three-time Cup winners. Then you throw in Crawford, who has been part of the last two Stanley Cups, and head coach Joel Quenneville who continues to take what he’s given and get the most out of it no matter the challenge and there’s the foundation you build around.
Chicago has managed to keep that core intact despite the fact that two of those players now make a combined $21 million against the cap. That requires tough decisions about the rest of the roster. This season was supposed to test Stan Bowman’s cap flexibility and it has, but he’s passing the test with flying colors. That brings us to No. 5.
5. Stan Bowman
Building a team underneath the cap is hard for any GM. The Blackhawks have had to remodel three different Stanley Cup rosters over six years and have had minimal dropoff after each. This year is especially challenging due to the Kane and Toews contracts, but you’d never know it by the way the team is playing presently.
What makes it especially impressive is that the return from the Sharp trade, a deal in which the Blackhawks had minimal leverage, hasn’t worked out all that great. Trevor Daley, the centerpiece of the Blackhawks’ return was already traded away for Rob Scuderi. Ryan Garbutt is an adequate fourth liner, though.
The Saad trade is working well enough thanks to Artem Anisimov turning into the second-line center the Blackhawks have craved for years. There were high hopes for Marko Dano — a key prospect in the deal — but hasn’t managed to stick at the NHL level this year. The Hawks are still trying to adequately replace Saad (though Andrew Shaw has played well in his spot) on the top line with Toews and Hossa, but it hasn’t hurt them.
Then you have to consider the failing play of veteran Bryan Bickell, creating a $4 million anchor in the lineup. He was sent to the AHL for the second time this season on Sunday. There was also the injury to Marcus Kruger that could knock him out for the remainder of the regular season. That should hurt team depth, but again, it hasn’t.
All of these challenges have been met either through organizational depth or making minor moves here or there to stay under the cap and stay competitive. Heck, even Richard Panik who was acquired in a seemingly minimal deal with the Maple Leafs scored in just his second game with the Blackhawks Sunday night. There were layers built into this year’s roster that gave the Blackhawks safety nets for the things that didn’t work as well.
The salary cap is designed to level the playing field and give more teams a better chance to stay competitive and win championships. It also makes building consistent winners extremely difficult. Apparently someone forgot to tell all of that to Bowman, though.
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