Bowman happy with how next Hawks team is coming together
The salary cap giveth. The salary cap taketh away.
That's the reality of today's NHL, a fact Blackhawks General Manager Stan Bowman knows all too well.
Remember, it wasn't that long ago that Bowman was shedding talented, up-and-coming players at a frenzied pace just to keep the Hawks cap compliant.
But when this off-season rolled around, Bowman finally dealt from a position of strength and crafted sweet deals for veteran defensemen Olli Maatta and Calvin de Haan, as well as tough, rugged winger Andrew Shaw.
All three are signed through the 2021-22 season and carry cap hits between $3.9 million and $4.55 million.
Then came Day 1 of free agency.
At first, the Hawks were relatively quiet Monday, inking former Vegas center Ryan Carpenter to a three-year, $3 million deal and coming to terms with David Kampf on a two-year contract.
About five hours later, though, Bowman put a cherry on his off-season sundae and inked Vezina Trophy finalist Robin Lehner to a one-year, $5 million deal.
So in the span of just over a week, the Hawks vastly improved their defense, penalty killing, depth scoring and goaltending. They've also gotten far deeper down the middle with Carpenter and even Shaw, who can play center if necessary.
Bowman was asked if it was nice to be on the other side of the salary-cap equation for once.
"We're in a better situation to pounce on some opportunities, (where) in the past we probably haven't been able to," Bowman said. "Other teams are kind of handcuffed right now because of their own situations. That was an opportunity we wanted to take advantage of, and I think we've been fairly nimble the past number of weeks to react quickly to situations that arise. …
"I've got to give credit my staff. I thought they did a tremendous job. … These guys have put in a lot of time coming up with all kinds of ideas, throwing scenarios at me. So it's certainly been a team effort and I'm fortunate to have those people by my side to help get this thing going."
Bowman also addressed other issues during his conference call Monday. A recap:
On Carpenter, who scored 5 goals in 68 games for Vegas last season and won 52.6 percent of his faceoffs:
"He's had a lot of success recently playing a style … that we wanted for our team. He fills a couple of elements with penalty killing, faceoffs, good two-way player. … He's the kind of guy who gets maybe overlooked sometimes, but your team doesn't win if you don't have people like Ryan Carpenter.
"Jeremy (Colliton) had a few conversations with him explaining how we envision his role. … It was nice to hear he saw himself in the same way. He was excited about the role he's going to have."
On where things stand with Alex DeBrincat and Dylan Strome, who will be restricted free agents after next season and will likely command at least $11 million combined:
"A lot of things are going to change between now and next summer. We're in a good position relative to other years when we've been in tougher spots. Other teams are doing some gymnastics now to try to get their guys signed. I think we're going to be in a better place than that.
"But it's always balancing the future and present. We want to win as well. It's not strictly looking for the future. The move today (of signing Lehner) is representative of that. It's not impacting next year directly. We want to have Robin here to help our team win. We've done a lot of the work we needed to do to be a better team heading into next season.
"Really like how our goaltending looks. I don't know if there's a better 1-2 combination in the league than (Corey) Crawford and Lehner. I like our defense now. I feel we have experienced guys. Those are two areas we need to be better. We need to keep the puck out of the net, and we have a better opportunity to do that today than we did a month ago."
On who the Hawks' No. 1 goalie is - Crawford or Lehner:
"What I meant by (best) 1-2 punch is that no goalie's ever played 82 games. You need two goalies. It doesn't matter how many one plays.
"You've got to win every night - you don't just have to win when you're supposed No. 1 is playing. We had discussions about Robin with that. It's not about a certain number of games a guy plays. We need to be great in net every night.
"So however the breakdown works out, it'll work out. That's really more for the coaching staff to mandate how many games guys play. There's a lot of things go into that - travel, back-to-backs, team performance, goaltender performance, health. It's kind of foolish to map out how many games each guy can play.
"We need two goalies. The situation we have today is better than it was."