Chicago Blackhawks’ Toews And Kane Contracts: Past, Present And Future

Optimistic viewpoint

Toews and Kane are both going into their third year of eight-year, $10.5 million AAV contracts. The $21 million combined leaves the ‘Hawks with $54 million in 2017-18 for the other 21 players on the active roster. But what did their contracts look like before?

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In the final year of their old contracts, Toews and Kane were both making $6.3 million a season. By the end of the five years they played at this price, the salary cap was $69 million across the league. This left the ‘Hawks with $56.4 million to assemble the rest of the team.

From an optimistic point of view, you can quickly look at the last year of their contracts and the upcoming season and see the budget for the rest of the team is only a $2.4 million difference.

While this amount would still account for a very strong free agent signing for the blue line or a forward to fill in for the loss of Artemi Panarin, the difference does not seem that bad considering the pay raises Toews and Kane were both due.

With the annual increase of the salary cap, there is typically around $2 million more to work with each year for every team in the league. If the trend continues, you could see the cap get to $77 million in the 2018-19 season.

Toews and Kane’s pay increases will have been paid off in the salary cap increase alone. While there were certainly a few rough years of assembling a team around the big contracts, these deals are starting to even out. If, of course, you like looking on the bright side of things.