Blackhawks: Simulating Five Years in the Future Using NHL 21

2022-23 Season – (Year 3)

Offseason moves to begin the year:

Alright, the offseason going into this season featured a lot of key players of this team now available to negotiate new contracts. Here are the players available to get a new contract: Kane, Debrincat, Strome, Toews, Keith, Beaudin, Suter, and Mitchell. A lot of these players actually will be coming off of their real contracts at this time.

The players signed right away: Kane (three years at 10.05 million) DeBrincat (three years at 9.1) Strome (two years at 9.3 million)

Regular Season Record: 43-30-9
Playoff Finish: First Round
Stanley Cup Champion: New York Rangers
Award Winners: None
Point Leaders: Goals (Kane 33) Assists (Strome 60) Points (Strome 86)

Notes: 

Going into January the Blackhawks had a 19-12-5 record and were in a wildcard spot. While things could be going better for Chicago, they were set to sneak into the playoffs again. Interestingly enough, Colorado has been leading the central division every year thus far going into January, however, they have fallen off the past two seasons to be wildcard teams.

Alright, I am not that happy about the Mitchell contract that you will read below. It was at the beginning of February that Mitchell finally showed that he was willing to talk about a contract and at that time it made sense to get him locked up for as long as possible. It is going to make things difficult in the future to get other players signed but Mitchell has been Chicago’s best defenseman.

After what looked like a promising season Chicago went down three games to zero to the Winnipeg Jets in the first round. Chicago failed to complete the comeback and lost in game six of the first round.

Key Trades:

Chicago traded Ryan Strome and Pius Suter to Carolina for Teravainen, Bean, and Gunler from Carolina
Chicago traded Toews and Wallmark to St. Louis for Sanford and Galchenyuk
Chicago traded two draft picks to Detroit for Robby Fabbri

Notable Contracts: 

Chicago signed Beaudin to an eight-year 3 million dollar contract
Chicago re-signed Ian Mitchell to a six-year 13.5 million dollar contract.