Chicago Blackhawks fans, I’d like to introduce you to ….. Radek Smolenak?
Yep, Smolenak is officially a Blackhawk — for now, anyway. With Adam Burish and Marian Hossa starting the season on IR, Joel Quenneville decided to go with Smolenak over Jack Skille and Rob Klinkhammer. While I’m surprised, let’s not get our panties in a bunch over the choice. But as ridiculous as the whole thing seemed to be leading up to the preseason, you have to wonder if Skille’s $1.275M cap hit factored into the decision to send him to Rockford. Well, whatever.
Jordan Hendry claimed the eighth defenseman roster spot, which doesn’t seem like a bad choice factoring in the preseason action I’ve seen and things I’ve read to this point.
Both the ‘Hawks and Florida Panthers are allowed to carry one extra player for the trip to Helsinki, and the Blackhawks chose to keep all three goaltenders. Either Corey Crawford or Antti Niemi will be sent to Rockford following the trip.
Ladies and gentleman, your first installment of the 2009-10 Chicago Blackhawks:
Forwards: Troy Brouwer, Dustin Byfuglien, Dave Bolland, Ben Eager, Colin Fraser, Patrick Kane, Tomas Kopecky, Andrew Ladd, John Madden, Patrick Sharp, Radek Smolenak, Jonathan Toews, Kris Versteeg
Defensemen: Cam Barker, Brian Campbell, Jordan Hendry, Niklas Hjalmarsson, Aaron Johnson, Duncan Keith, Brent Seabrook, Brent Sopel
Goalies: Corey Crawford, Cristobal Huet, Antti Niemi
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Interesting choice regarding Skille and Smolenak. Could it be that for these 2 games in Finland, each team had to have a Radek in the lineup (Dvorak for the Panthers)?
I expect the Hawks to win both easily.
By the way,what going on with the fantasy draft?
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