- The Chicago Blackhawks expect forward prospect Cole Guttman will be available to start camp after undergoing shoulder surgery near the end of last season, says AHL Rockford head coach Anders Sorensen. Guttman, a free agent signing out of the University of Denver, posted an impressive 30 points in 39 games with Rockford last year and added four goals and six points in 14 NHL games with Chicago. It’s not clear whether he’ll start 2023-24 in the NHL or AHL at this time.
Blackhawks Rumors
Chicago Blackhawks Sign Ryan Donato
The Chicago Blackhawks have signed forward Ryan Donato to a two-year, $2MM AAV deal, first reported by Daily Faceoff’s Frank Seravalli. The Blackhawks have also officially announced the deal.
The 27-year-old spent the last two seasons in Seattle, putting up decent secondary scoring numbers along the way. After picking up 16 goals and 15 assists in his first season with the Kraken, Donato followed that up with a 14-goal, 13-assist performance in 71 games despite seeing his playing time drop by more than 2:30 per game to just 11:15 a night.
While playing time was hard to come by on a deep Seattle squad, that shouldn’t necessarily be the case this time around on a Chicago team that has been busy adding this week after parting with many of their regular forwards in recent months.
Over the past few days, Taylor Hall was added to give top pick Connor Bedard a capable running mate on the top line while Andreas Athanasiou was recently re-signed. Meanwhile, veterans Nick Foligno and Corey Perry were brought in on one-year, $4MM deals but those two figure to play on the fourth line, meaning there should be an opportunity for Donato to grab a hold of a regular spot in Chicago’s middle six. If he’s able to do so, he could be in line for a career year which would also result in the Blackhawks getting a pretty good bang for their buck on this signing.
Chicago Blackhawks Acquire, Extend Corey Perry
06/30/23, 9:30 AM: Chicago has now officially announced that they’ve signed Perry to a one-year, $4MM deal.
06/30/23, 7:30 AM: Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman reports that the Blackhawks have reached an agreement on a one-year contract extension with the Blackhawks. The Athletic’s Pierre LeBrun confirmed that the deal is a one-year, $4MM pact, an identical deal to what Nick Foligno received from Chicago just a few days ago.
While $4MM is likely quite a bit more than what most teams would bid on Perry’s services, the Blackhawks aren’t in a similar financial position to most teams. With Perry signed to this deal they’re still projected to have over $20MM in cap space by CapFriendly, meaning they’re in a perfect position to pay veteran players high sums of money in order to convince them to play for a team barely anyone expects to make the playoffs.
More than anything else, this type of cap space allows the Blackhawks to pay higher prices for free agents in order to secure them on one-year deals, thereby saving their financial flexibility in future years where the team might have plan on making a playoff run.
06/29/23: The Chicago Blackhawks have acquired the rights to pending UFA forward Corey Perry from the Tampa Bay Lightning, sending a 2024 seventh-round pick in return.
This deal seems to fit the Blackhawks’ recent strategy of targeting respected veterans to support their growing crop of impressive prospects. Perry, 38, is a veteran of nearly 1,300 NHL games and numerous long playoff runs. While his skating ability has largely evaporated, he still has soft hands and some offensive skill, along with the edge he plays with that has become his trademark. He can still provide some value as a net-front player on a power play, and just a year ago he scored 19 goals and 40 points.
Even if Chicago gets production more in line with what Perry did this past season (12 goals, 25 points) that’s still a decent player to have on any team. The Blackhawks still need to sign Perry, of course, and Perry could always prefer to sign with a contender.
But the Blackhawks have a stockpile of cap space and the ability to offer Perry a deal he can’t refuse, meaning he’s likely to end up in Chicago, one would assume. For Tampa Bay, getting a pick (even a very late one) for a player they were not planning on extending is impossible to argue with.
Kurashev Only Blackhawk To Receive Qualifying Offer
- Charlie Roumeliotis of NBC Chicago reports that the only restricted free agent on the Chicago Blackhawks to receive a qualifying offer will be Philipp Kurashev. This means that Anders Bjork, Austin Wagner, and Caleb Jones will all go to the open market on Saturday. Jones is one of the more surprising players not to receive a qualifying offer, as he was originally brought in from the Edmonton Oilers to play with his brother, Seth Jones. Caleb is not a game-breaking player by any means but did eat just over 19 minutes a night for Chicago this season while also bringing quite the physical presence to their back end. Given that his qualifying offer would have been $1.35MM, and the Blackhawks are not in a cap crunch, it is likely that he will be playing for another team next season.
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Chicago Blackhawks Acquire, Buy Out Josh Bailey
11:10 AM: Per The Athletic’s Scott Powers, the Blackhawks are going to buy out Bailey, which is a bit of a surprise move. The Blackhawks will be reducing their cap obligation to $2.66MM this season instead of $5MM, at a cost of a $1.16MM cap hit next season.
9:50 AM: The New York Islanders have parted ways with their longest-tenured player, trading forward Josh Bailey and a 2026 second-round pick to the Chicago Blackhawks in exchange for future considerations.
In a pure cap dump deal, the Islanders have essentially traded a future second-round for an immediate $5MM in cap space. Bailey had been a consistent middle-six threat for the Islanders throughout a 15-year career there, but after just eight goals and 25 points in 64 games this season and multiple healthy scratches, both the player and organization felt it was time to move on.
Once a high-end playmaker, Chicago is still getting a player that might be effective in their current situation. Bailey was a well-respected leader in the Islanders’ room and has made it to multiple Eastern Conference Finals. Alongside Nick Foligno and Taylor Hall, Chicago is quickly putting together an ancillary group of some veteran skill and leadership to surround yesterday’s first overall pick, Connor Bedard.
It’s worth noting that a buyout for Bailey was rather palatable. Per CapFriendly, buying out the final season of Bailey’s six-year, $30MM contract would have cost them $2.67MM this season, providing $2.33M in savings. It would have cost them $1.167MM against the cap in 2024-25. Instead, they cut ties entirely, although it’s for the cost of a decent draft pick.
This is Chicago’s second significant move to weaponize cap space in the last few days, acquiring Hall and Foligno from the Boston Bruins for a pair of minor-league defensemen.
It’s the end of an era for the Islanders, who selected Bailey with the ninth overall pick in 2008. He would go on to play 1,057 games as an Islander, ranking third in franchise history behind Bryan Trottier and Denis Potvin. In that time, Bailey recorded 184 goals and 580 points.
The Islanders now have close to $10MM in projected cap space, per CapFriendly, which could go to re-signing their quartet of notable UFAs in Pierre Engvall, Zach Parise, Scott Mayfield, and Semyon Varlamov.
Chicago Blackhawks Select Connor Bedard First Overall
One of the NHL’s most historic clubs has acquired a new face of their franchise. Just a few months after saying their goodbyes to Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews, the Chicago Blackhawks have selected generational prospect Connor Bedard first overall at the 2023 NHL draft.
The Blackhawks’ selection is perhaps the least surprising first-overall choice since 2015, when Connor McDavid was picked by the Edmonton Oilers. He’s had a junior career for the ages, ever since he first joined the Regina Pats at 15 years old.
Despite not having the strongest supporting cast around him, Bedard managed to post video game numbers with Regina. He totaled 134 goals and 271 points in just 134 games of major junior hockey, taking home an endless number of league awards.
His international play has been similarly stunning. There aren’t enough words in the English language to describe Bedard’s performance at the most recent World Junior Championships, where he scored nine goals and 23 points in just seven games.
Besides size, Bedard offers just about anything a team could want out of an NHL scoring center. He’s arguably the most intelligent player in this year’s class, with the type of hockey IQ that makes him stand out shift after shift.
The moment he steps into the NHL he’ll be among the league’s most lethal shooters as well. Not only is Bedard’s shot extremely powerful and accurate, but it’s also the deception in his shooting motion that really sets him apart. He’s able to let high-end shots loose from a variety of angles and in the face of all sorts of defensive pressure, and he’s got legitimate Rocket Richard Trophy upside.
The Blackhawks are still missing a lot of pieces that Stanley Cup contenders typically boast. Their long-term goalie of the future is still a mystery (Drew Commesso showed some promise at Boston University) and outside of Seth Jones they still lack high-end NHL defensemen.
But Bedard signals an important shift for Chicago. The Blackhawks might not make the playoffs next year, but they’re no longer wandering the hockey wilderness in search of a young, league-altering star to build around. With this pick, they’ve drafted one.
Photos Courtesy of USA Today Sports Images
Chicago Blackhawks Acquire Taylor Hall
The Boston Bruins needed to clear some cap space and found a willing participant in the Chicago Blackhawks. The two have agreed on a four-player trade that includes Taylor Hall. The full deal is as follows:
- To Chicago: Taylor Hall, Nick Foligno (UFA)
- To Boston: Ian Mitchell (RFA), Alec Regula (RFA)
The Bruins will not retain any salary in the deal.
Hall, 31, signed a four-year $24MM contract with the Bruins in 2021 but will last just two seasons before joining the sixth NHL team of his career. The deal does include a 16-team no-trade clause (that drops to 10 teams in a few days) but Chris Johnston of North Star Bets reports that Chicago was not one of the blocked destinations, meaning Boston did not need his approval.
Hall’s $6MM cap hit is not a huge overpayment, as he is still a fine middle-six winger, but the Bruins found themselves in a precarious situation with just a few days before free agency opens. They are interested in bringing back trade deadline acquisition Tyler Bertuzzi, but needed to clear cap before working out any deal. It will be interesting to see if they can close the gap and keep Bertuzzi in the fold once Hall is officially off the books.
After being a part of the best regular season team in history, moving to Chicago is a significant downgrade for Hall. He isn’t joining an organization completely bereft of talent, though—he may even get to play with Connor Bedard, depending on how things shake out.
There is, of course, the possibility that the Blackhawks flip the 2018 Hart Trophy winner as they continue their rebuild. Two years of Hall isn’t going to do a ton for their Stanley Cup chances, and perhaps retaining some salary could mean even more assets for the Bedard-led club a few years from now.
Foligno’s inclusion is interesting, given he is a pending unrestricted free agent. Perhaps he will join the Blackhawks on a new deal to help lend some veteran leadership to the young group. The veteran forward is set to turn 36 in October but had a bounce-back season this year with 26 points in 60 games.
In terms of return for the Bruins, it’s really about the cap space. Mitchell and Regula are both fringe NHLers, who may have missed their window of real potential. Perhaps the Bruins see enough in one or both of them to make them a roster regular next season, but the young defensemen may again be destined for the minor leagues.
Mitchell, 24, played 35 games for the Blackhawks this season, registering one goal and eight points. The 2017 second-round pick has just 82 NHL games under his belt to this point, and is arbitration eligible as an RFA this summer. Interestingly, he does have a connection to Bruins head coach Jim Montgomery, who recruited and coached Mitchell at the University of Denver for one season.
Meanwhile, Regula is still just 22 but barely has any NHL experience. He saw just four games with the Blackhawks this season and has suited up 22 times in his career, registering a single point. Selected in the second round of the 2018 draft by the Detroit Red Wings, he is not yet eligible for arbitration.
At the very worst, the defenders could stretch out the depth chart for the Bruins, giving them valuable options to turn to in case of injury or poor performance next season.
Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet first broke the news that Hall was headed to the Blackhawks. Frank Seravalli of Daily Faceoff reported the full deal.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images
Snapshots: Bjork, Simashev, World Juniors
While former college hockey star Anders Bjork finished his season on a high note after a trade to the Chicago Blackhawks, scoring five points in his last four games and eight in 13 games overall, it seems Chicago won’t be issuing a qualifying offer. The Athletic’s Scott Powers reports that the Blackhawks “aren’t planning to give a qualifying offer,” though that “doesn’t mean the Blackhawks won’t necessarily re-sign” Bjork, just that they don’t want to issue a qualifying offer at a value of $1.8MM. (subscription link)
Set to turn 27 in August, Bjork spent most of last season in the AHL with the Rochester Americans, the longest stretch he’d spent in the minor leagues in his career. He’d previously been mostly an NHL option, with AHL stretches limited to just a handful of games. He didn’t overwhelm with Rochester, scoring 25 points in 42 games, and was eventually traded to Chicago for future considerations. Bjork showed some life under head coach Luke Richardson in Chicago, and that solid run of eight points in 13 games should serve him well heading into the open market, even if he may not receive a contract at the same value as his qualifying offer.
Some other notes from across the NHL:
- Russian blueliner Dmitri Simashev was recently ranked 19th in Bob McKenzie’s final draft rankings of the cycle for TSN, though he could end up going even higher than that at the draft next week. As relayed by CHEK’s Rick Dhaliwal, Simashev’s agent Dan Milstein says 24 of the NHL’s 32 teams have asked for a meeting with Simashev at the draft in Nashville. He’s a rangy six-foot-four blueliner currently under contract in the KHL through 2024-25. He’s widely regarded as a high-upside prospect with tantalizing physical tools, and in a draft thinner on defenseman compared to forwards, Simashev could be a fast-rising prospect.
- Hockey Canada, the CHL, and the IIHF announced today that the 2025 World Junior Championships will be played in Ottawa, Ontario. The Senators’ home arena, Canadian Tire Centre, will serve as the event’s primary location with the OHL’s Ottawa 67’s’ TD Place as the secondary venue. Canada has won three of the last four WJC events and will hope to take home the gold medal on their home turf just as they’ve done the past two events.
Chicago Blackhawks Re-Sign Joey Anderson
Forward Joey Anderson has re-signed with the Chicago Blackhawks, earning a one-year, two-way extension. The 25-year-old’s new contract carries a $800K cap hit.
A pending restricted free agent, the Blackhawks acquired Anderson from the Toronto Maple Leafs as part of the return for defenseman Jake McCabe and forward Sam Lafferty in late February. He looked effective while skating in a career-high 38 NHL games this season, split between Chicago and Toronto.
A third-round pick of the New Jersey Devils in 2016, Anderson played 34 games during his rookie season with New Jersey in 2018-19 but largely slipped to a top-six AHL role in the following years. After earning more of a look with Toronto this year when injuries struck, though, he gave the Blackhawks something to think about after the McCabe deal. He stayed in the NHL through the end of Chicago’s season, recording four goals and six points in 24 games before heading to AHL Rockford for the last few games of their 2022-23 campaign.
Anderson was due a qualifying offer of $840K after completing a three-year, $750K average annual value extension signed with Toronto in 2020. His contract was one-way in nature last season, entitled to an $800K salary wherever he played. If he gets demoted to the minors at all in 2023-24, he’ll be taking a pay cut (PuckPedia reports his AHL salary is $475K).
Blackhawks Notes: Toews, Draft Picks, UFAs, Goalies
Aside from drafting their next franchise center at the end of the month, the biggest storyline in the Chicago Blackhawks’ offseason is what the future holds for his predecessor, captain Jonathan Toews. A return to the Blackhawks has seemed very unlikely for some time, given how the end of the season went. Still, speculation around a return, given the impending entrance of Connor Bedard, has been a topic of discussion.
According to The Athletic’s Scott Powers, Toews is expected to be announced in the coming weeks to announce a decision regarding retirement or a potential move to another team in free agency. Toews, 35, took a leave of absence prior to the 2020-2021 season due to Chronic Immune Response Syndrome, which, along with some effects of long COVID, caused him to miss a stretch of games near the end of 2022-23 as well.
Should Toews choose to hang up his skates, it would mark the end of a notable career that includes three Stanley Cup championships and numerous accolades but a debatable reputation as a captain stemming from the sexual assault scandal that occurred during the team’s 2010 championship run. After completing his eight-year, $84MM contract extension signed in 2014, Toews will surely generate some interest from teams looking to fill out their middle six if he does decide to try and extend his career.
More from Powers on the Blackhawks this morning:
- In regards to their second first-round pick in the upcoming draft, 19th overall, the Blackhawks have a handful of players they’re hoping will still be available to them – and they’re likely to select a second forward to supplement Bedard. Among the prospects at the scouting combine, forwards Colby Barlow, Oliver Moore, Calum Ritchie, Matthew Wood, and Brayden Yager are potential options for the Blackhawks. Additionally, the team has shown interest in 6-foot-5 Russian forward Daniil But, and general manager Kyle Davidson expressed a lack of hesitancy to Powers around selecting Russian players in this year’s draft. Looking ahead to the team’s four second-round picks, goaltender Adam Gajan, forwards Otto Stenberg and Bradly Nadeau, as well as defensemen Oliver Bonk and Andrew Strathmann are potential considerations for the Blackhawks.
- The Chicago Blackhawks have made their decision regarding pending unrestricted free agents, says Powers, signaling that after re-signing Andreas Athanasiou, the team is unlikely to bring back any of their other UFAs. Players such as Jujhar Khaira and Alex Stalock, among a few others, will explore options elsewhere as the Blackhawks prioritize their roster composition to provide opportunities for younger players and build out some higher-end support for Bedard via free agency.
- Davidson also indicated to Powers that Arvid Soderblöm and Petr Mrazek are expected to form the team’s NHL goaltending tandem for the upcoming season. Speaking about the young goalies, Davidson emphasized Soderblöm’s potential and the development aspect of their decision-making process so as to not rush their other prospects. Soderblöm, who has already spent time as a North American pro (and played pro in Europe), holds an experience advantage over other prospects like Jaxson Stauber and Drew Commesso.