Wild veteran's diagnosis of the Blackhawks: Salary cap stripped them of experience

For Zach Parise, the Blackhawks' struggles of the last few years are no mystery: It all boils down to the salary cap.

"I mean, you have a team that's a dynasty and you get penalized for being good, penalized for drafting well and penalized for winning," Parise said. "It's not fair. But that's the reality."

Before Minnesota played the Hawks at the United Center on Sunday, I asked to speak with Parise to get the forward's thoughts on the Wild's incredible 10-1-4 run in the previous 15 games.

After all, Parise's aging team is one many of us predicted to finish last in the Central Division. At first, those predictions looked spot on as Minnesota started off 1-6-0 and was still just 6-11-1 after 18 games.

"Early on, we were pretty sloppy defensively," said Parise, who is just 19 games away from his 1,000th NHL appearance. "We were giving up a lot of good chances right in the slot. Our sort-outs when we were backchecking were not very good.

"So there were a lot of holes where we were getting exposed pretty bad."

Sound familiar, Hawks fans?

Minnesota, though, slowly started to figure it out, thanks in large part to watching tons of video. Parise said the veterans started seeing what they were doing wrong and began defending from the middle of the ice out.

"That's how a lot of the good defensive teams play," Parise said. "It's just five tight, right in the middle now."

The Wild are fortunate that they also have a wealth of experience, especially on the blue line. Ryan Suter (1,107), Jared Spurgeon (620), Jonas Brodin (520) and Matt Dumba (376) have more than 2,600 games in the league. Minnesota is also using 31-year-old journeyman Brad Hunt and 25-year-old Carson Soucy, who played four years in college and two more in the AHL.

Six forwards, including Ryan Hartman, have all played over 250 games.

"It probably helps," Parise said. "It reduces the panic level. It's like, 'Hey, we're fine. It's early.'

"I would say when you have a younger team and you spiral, it's probably a lot harder to get out because you don't have that experience of, 'We'll get past this and everything will be fine.'

"All of a sudden you don't see any light at the end of the tunnel."

Which is exactly how the 13-15-6 Blackhawks might start feeling if they don't start winning consistently. While coach Jeremy Colliton does have four players (when Duncan Keith returns) with at least 900 games of experience and four more with at least 392, he's also using 11 with under 200 games.

Six of those 11 against Minnesota were Alex Nylander (52 games), Dominik Kubalik (32), Kirby Dach (28), Matthew Highmore (18), Dennis Gilbert (11) and Adam Boqvist (10).

No one else in the Central Division is dealing with this glaring problem. Every team has its share of youth, but also sports rosters of stars and role players with 250, 400, 500, 700 and 900 or more games. Almost every successful squad needs a few 5- to 7-year veterans who understand what it takes to win.

Former Hawks D-man Cody Franson said as much almost exactly two years ago after he was demoted to Rockford.

"It's a copycat league and obviously the game's getting faster," Franson said. "But there's going to be people that find out the hard way that (speed and youth are) not everything. You can't replace experience.

"Sometimes organizations ... start changing a bunch of things and they put it in a bunch of young people's hands and there's growing pains that go with that."

While Colliton agreed that it's not easy to win consistently with a young roster, he also added that nobody is exempt from the Hawks' recent struggles.

"You can't pin it on the young players," he said. "It's up and down the lineup we've got to do a better job."

For anyone screaming about how young the Hawks were in 2010 when they won the Stanley Cup, just remember they also had Marian Hossa (832 regular-season games), John Madden (791), Brent Sopel (588), Brian Campbell (561), Patrick Sharp (419), Duncan Keith (404), Brent Seabrook (392), Andrew Ladd (321), Dustin Byfuglien (260) and Tomas Kopecky (257).

Then, of course, the Hawks won it all again with even more experienced squads in 2013 and '15.

Over the last couple of seasons, though, the roster has gotten younger and younger as GM Stan Bowman has tried to unsuccessfully to maneuver through a tough salary-cap world.

"You lose such important players," Parise said. "You lose (Niklas) Hjalmarsson, you lose (Johnny) Oduya. To me, those guys were so good for them when they were winning.

"Then you lose your important role players because they play a big part in the Cup runs and they earn more money. Johnny and Kaner, they play great so they're going to get more money to stay at market value.

"So that's what sucks about the cap."