Chicago Blackhawks: Appreciating Brent Seabrook

The Chicago Blackhawks are a team that is coming off of the best decade in franchise history and there are many guys to thank, including number seven.

The Chicago Blackhawks won the Stanley Cup three times in six years during the salary cap era and a time where the National Hockey League has so much parity. It was one of the greatest runs by a single team in the history of the league. There are many players that the Hawks can thank, but not many more important than Brent Seabrook.

Seabrook was a major part of all three teams that won the holy grail and the organization and all of its fans should be so grateful for what he has done. He has been an incredible defenseman for a long time and you can’t let his recent struggles as he ages define who he is/was as a player. He was the number two on this team behind Duncan Keith but he would have been the number one on most other teams.

Seabrook was a first-round pick for Chicago in the 2003 NHL Draft. He was the 14th overall pick in 2003, which was the greatest draft in NHL history. Seabrook has been the definition of a two-way defenseman with a booming shot throughout his career. From the blue line, he has 100 goals and 360 assists for 460 points in 1082 games. He is also a career +110 which is very good.

He was also known for the clutch in the playoffs. In all of the Blackhawks runs in the playoffs which add up to 123 playoff games, he has 20 goals and 39 assists for 59 points. There are three game-winning goals in there for Seabrook and they have all come in overtime. He has had a flair for the dramatic.

So now in 2019, he isn’t even close to what he once was. He has a wildly high priced contract for the production he currently gives, but he earned the contract that he was given and that is the bottom line. You can be okay with the Blackhawks moving on from him because that is just the nature of sports, but to be disrespectful to Seabrook as a player isn’t right. He had five goals and 23 assists for 28 points last season in 78 games, which isn’t terrible. He is still an NHL depth defenseman. He has also given so much to this organization and everyone should be grateful his prime was spent in Chicago.

Hopefully, with the high number of defensive prospects that the Blackhawks have they can allow Seabrook to play lower in the lineup and put him in a position where he can succeed. It would be awesome to see Seabrook have a bounce-back year in 2019-20 but fans should just accept him for what he currently is at this point in his career which is a number four or five defensemen.