Chicago’s Corey Crawford good to go
With cap room and a healthy goalie, GM is confident
Even with the departure of a Blackhawks legend, new-found flexibility with the salary cap and the presence of dynamic prospects on the ice below, questions for Chicago general manager Stan Bowman once again centred around Corey Crawford’s health.
There’s no bigger issue facing the Hawks, who faltered last National Hockey League season when Crawford went down with what the team called an upper-body injury.
Crawford hasn’t said publicly that he’s healthy and prepared to start the season in goal but Bowman, who met with the media Tuesday between sessions at Blackhawks development camp, believes Crawford will be ready.
“Corey was actually just in town,” Bowman said. “I ran into him yesterday, talked to him for awhile. So, yeah, things are looking good. He said he hasn’t done a whole lot of on-ice stuff yet, but like most of our guys, a few of our guys were just starting to skate today as well . ... I know he has been training off ice. Hopefully, things are good.”
Bowman also discussed last week’s trade of Marian Hossa — or more specifically, Hossa’s contract. Hossa was getting $5.275-million per year for the next three years. Hossa was forced to miss last season with a serious skin condition and announced this summer he would not play again.
“It was becoming challenging to try to operate with that contract here,” Bowman said. “It necessitated us trying to make the move we made . ... We had a number of talks over the past year trying to see if we could move it and it never worked out. Not for lack of trying. But when this presented itself, we talked it through and got to the point where we thought it was something we had to take advantage of.”
The Hawks have around $5.5 million in cap space, according to Capfriendly.com, but Bowman seems to be looking ahead to next off-season to spend that money when a number of restricted free agents likely will require raises, including Nick Schmaltz and Dylan Sikura.
However, he didn’t rule out adding players who become available during training camp as rosters around the league start to take shape.
“In the past we probably haven’t really been a good match for those types of situations because we didn’t have the cap room at that time,” Bowman said.
“So now we’re going to be in the mix for those types of things. Whether we use it right away or whether we use it during the season, the nice thing is we have the flexibility now going in to the coming years where we’re going to need cap room, all that and more, to sign the young players.”
Bowman raved about the young prospects at camp this week, some of whom could play at the United Center this season. But most of the top players, including this year’s first-round picks Adam Boqvist and Nicolas Beaudin, are at least a year or two away, some feel.
Hawks fans weren’t impressed with free-agent pickups Chris Kunitz, Brandon Manning and Cam Ward. But Bowman said he believes the roster as currently assembled — with Crawford in net — can return the Hawks to the playoffs.
“We’re not looking at the past,” Bowman said. “We’ve done that — we have done our assessments. Now we’re excited, we’re looking forward and we’re hopeful for the next year.”