The Blackhawks are making a safe bet that Frank Nazar will become a superstar

Frank Nazar has yet to play a full season, but the Chicago Blackhawks are still handing him a massive contract extension.

The team announced that Nazar has agreed to a seven-year contract extension with an annual average value of $6.59 million.

The Hawks are making a safe bet

While he has only played 56 career games with 27 points, he has shown he is an ascending player.

Nazar is still 21, and this extension will keep him in a Blackhawks sweater through the 2032-33 season (he still has a year remaining on his entry-level deal). This deal will carry him through his 20s.

With the salary cap rising, an AAV just a shade under $7 million no longer can be seen a potential cap-clogging deal if Nazar's career stagnates

It likely will continue to progress.

He scored eight goals and four assists over the final two months of the season. This player possesses incredible playmaking ability. 10 of his 14 assists last season came in 5-on-5.

The bet the Hawks are making is that he becomes a 60-plus-point scorer. It is not unreasonable to expect him to double his 13 career goals next season to score 26. Hopefully, he triples his 14 career assists to have 42 next season. If he averages 26 goals and 42 assists a season, that would be great production for a young player.

If he can triple his current goal production and quadruple his current assists, then the Blackhawks have a superstar with a cap hit that is less than $7 million.

The main reason he has not played a full NHL slate of games is that he signed his entry-level deal late in the 2023-23 season. He started last season in Rockford. He did have a terrible preseason, which made it a no-brainer for the team to send him to the AHL. At the same time, he had a high bar to clear to start the season in the NHL, as general manager Kyle Davidson prefers to be patient with his prospects' development.

Once Nazar was called up, he showed he was worthy of staying in the NHL. Now, Davidson is betting he will continue to move up the stardom ladder. Davidson got Nazar to sign at a reasonable price, much like he got Alex Vlasic to sign a long-term extension.

This bet will likely pay out huge if he is skating on the same line as Connor Bedard.

However, it seems like the organization wants him to be the second-line center.

Being an undersized center is not the issue for having Nazar skate on the second line. It is more so the top line still does not have enough talented players to skate with Bedard on the top line.

Daily Face Off is projecting Ryan Donato and Andre Burakovsky starting the season on the first line with Bedard. While Donato proved he can be an outstanding goal scorer last season, that season could be just his career year.

Instead, it would be better to have Nazar or Bedard center the first line and the other skate on the wing and play off each other.

Exploring Nazar on the second line should be reserved for when he fully reaches his potential and the Hawks have better forwards to skate with Bedard.

The Blackhawks will have plenty of time to experiment with what to do with Nazar. That is another reason the club has made a reasonable bet on Nazar's future.