No Sympathy For Blackhawks

I'm getting a little tired of hearing (and reading) fans and writers complain/whine about how the salary cap has made it impossible for GM Stan Bowman to keep his Stanley Cup winning Blackhawks together for a run at defending their title. This isn't the fault of a salary cap system. Let's be honest here... The reason Chicago has had to jettison salaries is because of the ridiculous contracts handed out by prior GM Dale Tallon.

Now, don't get me wrong. The purpose of this blog isn't to paint Tallon as the bad guy or a clueless GM. Let's get one thing clear. Tallon's job was to build a team to win the cup, and he did that. The moves he made to sign Brian Campbell, Cristobal Huet and Marian Hossa gave the 'Hawks the depth needed to outlast their competition in the Stanley Cup tournament, and they did that.

However, when it comes to building a sustainable winner, that's where Tallon's actions have left some questions. when you have a young core of defenseman in Duncan Keith and Brent Seabrook to build around, why sign Campbell to a high dollar, long term deal? Or for that matter, why give a long term high value contract to Huet, who at the time hadn't experienced a sustained run of success at either the regular season or post-season level in the NHL?

These moves alone, while providing a roster that did win a Cup, make it highly unlikely to leave sufficient cap room for when the entry-level deals for cornerstones Patrick Kane, Jonathan Toews and the other talented youngsters expire. But when you add to them the offersheet fiasco of missing the deadline to offer deals to his RFA's last season, this is strike 2 against Tallon. Let me break this down a little further...

When the cap is set at $59 million, and you have Campbell ($7 million), Huet ($5 million) and Kris Versteeg ($3 million) eating up $15 million of that room while none of them play on your top line, defense pairing, or win the goalie job outright, you've signed some bad deals. None of these players have ever proven themselves as "core" players like Keith, Kane, Toews or Seabrook have.

Tallon did an awesome job of drafting. This Blackhawks team has to still be considered a contender because of the depth that exists in the organization. Players like Jack Skille, Kyle Beach, Bryan Bickell and Troy Brouwer will get their chance to prove their talents as they fill the holes left by Bowman trading role players Dustin Byfuglien, Andrew Ladd, Kris Versteeg and Brent Sopel.

Just don't blame the salary cap for those trades. A #3 defenseman, backup goalie and 3rd line winger should cost you much less than $15 million, and that's a personnel fault of Tallon, not a flaw of the CBA.

This CBA is working. The idea is to give cost-certainty to every one of the 30 teams and provide a spending limit to ensure all 30 teams have a level playing field. As evidenced by the rejection of the Ilya Kovalchuk contract, the league is taking steps to ensure the contracts are fair in the spirit of the labor agreement.

Dale Tallon built a championship team, and he deserves credit for that. But the way he built it was to win one cup. It's not fair or realistic to look beyond that and blame the salary cap for the dismantling of this team.