For an NHL general manager, there is no more Herculean task than managing the league’s salary cap correctly. There’s no get-out-of-jail free cards or massive loopholes like in the NBA. Once you build a Stanley Cup contending roster, the work is only beginning.
Just ask the Chicago Blackhawks. Eight months after winning the Stanley Cup with a roster loaded with young talent, Chicago entered play Thursday two points out of a Western Conference playoff spot. How did that happen? Well, there wasn’t enough room to keep key contributors like goalie Antti Niemi, 27; defensemen Dustin Byfuglien, 25; and forwards Kris Versteeg, 24, and Andrew Ladd, 25.
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“You can’t redo a roster by 50 percent and not expect to have some issues,” NBC analyst Mike Milbury said. “And the Hawks already had some issues. They’ve lost a lot of grit. They lost some toughness. They’ve lost what arguably was as valuable a player they had in the playoffs in Byfuglien last year. So there was bound to me some bumps along the road. … Throw in some goaltending issues and you got a recipe for an uneven season.”
