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Reaction: Blackhawks move Lehner and Gustafsson

February 25, 2020, 9:18 AM ET [810 Comments]
Tyler Cameron
Chicago Blackhawks Blogger • RSSArchiveCONTACT


The trade deadline has come and gone.

How are we all feeling today?

Here is the inbound and outbound bounty that the Hawks ended up with:

OUT
* Robin Lehner
* 50% of Lehner's salary
* Erik Gustafsson
* Nathan Noel

IN
* 2020 2nd round pick (VGK)
* Malcolm Subban
* Rights to Slava Demin
* 2020 3rd round pick (CAL or EDM – conditional on whichever pick is higher)
* T.J. Brennan


Hmmm… I would be lying to you if I said that I was happy with Stan's work yesterday.

I will preface this by saying that I'm obviously not in the room and hearing other team's offers but there are a few things that really bothered me.

There are also some things that made sense.

Erik Gustafsson goes for a 3rd rounder. Honestly, it's fine. We all know the deficiencies he has as a player so a 3rd rounder probably makes sense. I was thinking that it would be more like a 2nd and 4th round return, similar to Marco Scandella's deal.

I believe after those trades that went through earlier last week including Scandella, Andy Greene, Brendan Dillon and Alec Martinez that included a handful of 2nd rounders, that Stan might have missed the boat on moving Gus.

The Mike Green trade in the early hours of trade deadline day to the Oilers seemed to bring the market value down on a guy like Gustafsson. The return was a 4th rounder, as well as DET eating Kyle Brodziak's salary.

Derek Forbert went for a 4th rounder to CAL. He's a 5-6 dman with a higher cap hit than Gustafsson ($2.25M)

So, with Gustafsson's very low cap hit ($1.2M), his versatility of playing LD/RD, and his ability to be an offensive defender who can run a PP, while we waiting – for what seemed to be hours – on the return for #56, I thought a couple of draft picks would have been in the cards.

Like I said, not that surprised though and Stan seems like he took the best offer.

Moving on to the Robin Lehner debacle. I am not pleased with the way this shook out. However, I have come to the conclusion that I'm more pissed off at the way this situation in its entirety was handled vs. just the return CHI received Tuesday.

First, the trade itself, I have cooled off a bit but still don't love that the Hawks essentially got a 2nd rounder for Robin Lehner while eating 50% of his salary.

Slava Demin wasn't even a top 10 prospect in the Vegas organization and while it's cute that Stan said they "have liked him for a long time" I don't anticipate he will ever play a game in the NHL.

Malcolm Subban appears to be a throw into this deal. He's been real bad this year and was one of the main reasons Gerard Gallant doesn't have a job anymore. I am scared to see how Subban performs in the Blackhawks "system". Hope he likes 40 shots (half of those high danger) per game.

Now, once again, I don't know how the contract negotiations played out behind closed doors but Stan… YOU HAVE AN ELITE 27-YEAR OLD GOALIE THAT FELL IN YOUR LAP… HOW DID YOU MESS THIS ONE UP?

Ok, now that I have my yelling out of the way. If Robin and his camp were asking for something ridiculous like 8.5-10M AAV, I get why the Hawks walked away.

I'm not so sure that was the case though.

There have been so many conflicting reports on this contract negotiation; Elliotte Friedman says he thought the term was the hurdle for the Hawks then Mark Lazerus reported within hours of the Lehner deal to VGK that he would have taken a 3-year deal for "less" than market value.

Well, the latter seems like a PR ploy from Lehner's agent because, in December, Lehner was very vocal about not taking a discount.

So what's true and what actually happened? Who knows.

All I know is that Lehner is gone and I don't have much hope of him returning.

And I suspect that Corey Crawford is your 2020-21 starting goaltender for the Blackhawks.

I will have a goalie future breakdown coming out in the next couple of weeks which will feature what to make of the Subban addition, Delia and Lankinen's future and what the Hawks could truly look like between the pipes next year.

For now, I will give you a teaser of what I'm thinking; I say the Hawks sign Crawford for a 2-year deal around 3-4M AAV while bringing in a higher tier goaltending prospect (or signing from Europe) to platoon with Crow.

Could there be something to the Sorokin leak Dreger had reported on Friday? Maybe not, but I believe the Hawks new strategy might be what I have outlined above.

In the meantime, Stan Bowman mentioned that Subban, Delia and Lankinen will "battle it out" for the backup position. Not sure how they do that.

I believe they will give Subban a couple games but really hope both Delia and Lankinen get a couple games as well. The Hawks need to see what they have in these guys at the NHL level.

Finally, the last trade of the day was for T.J. Brennan who apparently hasn't been playing since mid-January because he doesn't play defence. Perfect… he'll be nice and sharp as the IceHogs push for the playoffs.

So, that's all I have for now but I want to hear your thoughts on yesterday's trades.


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Lastly, if you would like to hear my thoughts on Stan and the TDL in the form of a podcast, I jumped on with The-Rink guys last night to provide instant reaction from the day. Enjoy:




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Hawks play an actual hockey game tonight vs. St Louis.

I'll have more thoughts and reactions as the week goes on.

See ya out there!

TC
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