Could the Blackhawks take advantage of the salary cap already?

The Chicago Blackhawks used to be one of the teams struggling to get under the Salary Cap year in and year out, now they find themselves on a different path.

The Blackhawks salary cap space is something that they usually never see this time of year. During the Blackhawks runs for the cups they would usually end up having to give up assets to get under the cap, now they find themselves ready to take advantage of other teams.

Chicago has over five million in cap space right now. While that should go down thanks to a potential contract for Dylan Strome, they should still have a little bit of space to work with next season, and who knows maybe they pass on Strome.

There are a lot of teams out there struggling to make their way under the cap, even if they do plan to put some players on long term injury reserved at the start of the season. They still need to make some changes now.

Here is the complete list of teams over the salary cap via Puck Pedia’s twitter.

Even if a team like Montreal only needs to get rid of under a million in cap space, they could potentially deal a player to the Blackhawks to get the cap space they need.

Chicago’s cap space could be an asset for the team earning them draft picks and prospects in exchange for taking on a contract with a little too much salary during the short term.

Even if it is just a one or two year contract, Chicago can make that work with a lot of salary coming off of the books this offseason. As projected for next season, Chicago will have about 19 million in cap space before they go out and add any players or re-sign some of their key contracts.

Chicago could easily take on a two or three million dollar contract right now, while also adding an asset in a deal that nets a team like Vancouver some cap space and gives Chicago some prospects for the future.

It was a move we saw all the time in the past as teams took advantage of Chicago’s predicament with the salary cap, and now Chicago can do it to other teams.

Maybe Chicago doesn’t help any of these team’s get under the salary cap for the coming season, but you can bet that by the time the trade deadine rolls around teams will be looking for some cap room to make a trade, and that is when Chicago can factor into the situtation.