The Blackhawks finally found a home for goalie Laurent Brossoit on Thursday, trading him to the Sharks.
More confusing and complicated were the other parts of the deal. In all, the Hawks dealt Brossoit, defensive prospect Nolan Allan and a 2028 seventh-round pick and received the dead contract of Ryan Ellis, defensive prospect Jake Furlong and a 2028 fourth-round pick.
Ellis hasn’t played since 2021 due to injury and is considered medically retired, but he was likely the most valuable part of the deal from the Hawks’ perspective.
That’s because his contract still carries a $6.25 million salary-cap hit through next season, which could help the Hawks reach the salary floor even with so many young players on cheap entry-level contracts populating their roster. The Hawks are using Shea Weber’s dead contract for the same purpose this season.
Brossoit, who never ended up playing an NHL game for the Hawks, had been looking for a new opportunity since finally recovering from a year-and-a-half long injury absence that included multiple knee and hip surgeries.
The Hawks had stuck him in the AHL with Rockford while trying to find a team willing to absorb his $3.3 million cap hit without needing the Hawks to retain salary. They wanted to preserve their two available retention slots (one is already occupied by Seth Jones) for possibly higher-value trades leading up to the March 6 deadline.
The draft-pick swap is easy enough to understand. The Hawks moved up three rounds in a draft a few years away, which is when they will value picks more as trade chips than as methods of acquiring prospects.
Allan’s inclusion perplexed fans the most. The 2021 first-round pick — a physical, stay-at-home guy — looked like a future piece of the Hawks’ defense when he spent the first 43 games of last season in the NHL.
But his performance had trailed off since then, and a bunch of other defensemen had jumped him on the depth chart.
Furlong, a 2022 fifth-round pick, is another AHL defensive defenseman whom scouts believe possesses lower upside than Allan, although he will plug Allan’s spot in Rockford’s lineup.
Running the numbers
Why were the Hawks eager to add a worthless $6.25 million to their 2026-27 payroll? That requires some math to explain.
Right now, the Hawks have roughly $51.1 million committed to nine forwards, five defensemen and two goalies for next season. That leaves them roughly $25.8 million shy of the expected $76.9 million floor.
Connor Bedard’s extension — which will likely carry a cap hit of $13-15 million, considering his excellent play this season — will eliminate a huge portion of that gap.
But that still leaves another $11-13 million unaccounted for, and the NHL arrivals of top forward prospects Anton Frondell and Roman Kantserov won’t help because their entry-level salaries are capped under $1 million each.
It’s the same story with other prospects — such as Kevin Korchinski, Sacha Boisvert, Marek Vanacker, A.J. Spellacy and Samuel Savoie — who could push for NHL jobs.
Adding Ellis’ contract knocks that gap down to $5-7 million, which is much more surmountable. Re-signing either Jason Dickinson or Ilya Mikheyev (two pending free agents) and bringing in an experienced right-handed defensemen to replace Connor Murphy (another pending free agent) should easily cover that.
Around the league, there are people who worry that an NHL roster composed of so many kids — and so few veterans — that reaching the floor is a real concern might be a recipe for disaster.
But this is the path Hawks general manager Kyle Davidson believes in, and he sticks to his plans. The surprising competitiveness and promising development of the Hawks’ already very young NHL roster this season has only reinforced his dedication.
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