Hawks' trio thrilled to share signing day

Signing the largest contract in Blackhawks history was even more special for Duncan Keith in that it was announced on the same day as the news deals for teammates Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane.

"We are a close group of guys and there's no individual player who is bigger than the team," Keith said Thursday after his 13-year, $72 million contract was formally announced.

The unassuming Keith always has preferred to blend into the background, but that's no longer possible with his development into one of the NHL's premier defensemen.

Chairman Rocky Wirtz had no trouble signing off on the lucrative contracts for his three stars, particularly after how Keith, Toews and Kane have represented the Hawks in their careers.

"It's a long time, but the nice thing is the player (Keith) wanted to commit to us," Wirtz said. "I think usually the team would be willing to do something like that if they had a marquee player, but the players say, 'I want to keep it short because I want to keep grinding more out of that stone and see how more I can get paid.' I think it showed that this young man really cares about the Blackhawks and cares about the fans and if someone is going to put No. 2 on their jersey, it's not going to be someone new tomorrow."

Keith is one of the few players remaining from some of the darkest days of the franchise, when the Hawks were bad and few people cared.

"Duncan Keith was here in the days when we would announce 10,000 or 12,000 people and had less than the announcement," Wirtz said. "When he saw this transformation he realized he wanted to be a part of this organization and that meant more to me than anything else.

"He wants to retire here. Many times we've been criticized for some of the great players we drafted not finishing their careers here. The exciting thing was you had three players that checked their ego at the gate and realized they wanted to make this commitment together."

Hawks general manager Stan Bowman had been negotiating with the agents for all three players for weeks in hopes the contract extensions could be announced on the same day.

"It was important to the players," Bowman said. "None of them wanted to be the one guy signing their deal while the other two guys waited."

Even though Kane and Toews share the same agent in Pat Brisson and have been so closely identified with each other since coming to the club together, Bowman said the deals - the same five-year, $31.5 million pacts - were negotiated individually.

"We tend to package them together because it's been Toews and Kane, Kane and Toews since they've come in together, but they're individual players and they were treated as such," Bowman said.