The Blackhawks have no obligation to keep Toews and Kane

The Chicago Blackhawks and the rest of the National Hockey League are fully in hot-stove season now. There are big-time trades being made, pretty good players being let go, and free agency is about to begin.

The Hawks have already made some big-time moves. They brought in 11 players via the 2022 NHL Draft but they sent out a lot of NHL talent in the meantime. This team is going to look very different in 2022-23.

Both Alex DeBrincat and Kirby Dach have been traded away, Dylan Strome and Dominik Kubalik were not qualified, and both Brett Connoly and Henrik Borgstrom were put on waivers for the purpose of a buyout. Those are all NHL players gone in different ways.

At this point, the Blackhawks have no obligation to keep Jonathan Toews or Patrick Kane. They are both over 30 with a big cap hit for one more year. Trading them now before the season is the best way to get something of value. Even if they have to retain on their salary, it will be worth it.

The Chicago Blackhawks shouldn’t feel obligated to keep Toews and Kane.

Sure, it would be nice to keep the two greatest players in franchise history around. Loyalty doesn’t really exist anymore in sports which is a shame but that isn’t the Blackhawks’ problem. They need to do what is right for their team and not maximizing a return for these two wouldn’t be right.

In the case of Toews, it would basically be getting anything they can to relieve them of some of that cap space. When you are a rebuilding team you can use that extra cap space as a weapon as it could allow you to gain more assets.

For Kane, a contender would love to add him as he can still be a 90-100 point guy for another year or two. He is still one of the best offensive players in the league and would help anyone become a better winner. Both guys provide a tremendous amount of experience.

Unfortunately, the Hawks are going to get zero series wins while Toews and Kane are on these matching eight-year deals. Nobody ever would have thought that to be true when they were first signed but here we are.

As tough as it is, this team is fully committed to rebuilding now. It is bad enough that Seth Jones has an eight-year deal worth nine million starting this year. Navigating that is going to be hard for them as they rebuild but dealing with Toews and Kane is first priority now.