The Blackhawks must get Spencer Knight's next contract right

It is remarkably difficult to win the Stanley Cup when paying a goaltender market value. 

When looking at the past 10 champions, if you take out the generational Sergei Bobrovsky’s and Andrei Vasilevskiy’s massive contracts, the average cap hit of the Cup winning netminder comes out to roughly $2.6 million. 

Now, to be fair, a global pandemic certainly impacted those numbers as the salary cap remained stagnant between 2019 and 2022. I also understand that you can’t get away with paying a quality starter under $3 million anymore. The point still stands – if you want to win a Cup, you are more than likely going to need your ace to give you a discount. 

The Blackhawks must get Spencer Knight's next contract right.

Knight, 24, is entering the final season of a three-year contract that pays him $4.5 million a year.

He signed this deal when he was with Florida in the midst of Bobrovsky’s struggles. Knight played fantastically in the 2021 playoffs as a rookie and looked like a franchise goalie, so Florida shelled out some serious money in the hopes that the deal would look like a steal shortly thereafter.

Unfortunately for Knight, Bobrovsky regained his spark and became a dominant starter again, relegating Knight to backup duties.

On their way to a third straight Final and a second straight Cup, Florida flipped Knight to Chicago in March. This spring with the Hawks, the Connecticut native performed serviceably behind a porous defense and gave fans hope that he could be the goalie that leads the team back to its previous glory. 

That being said, if you look at Knight’s whole body of work – just 95 starts, a 2.83 GAA, and a 9.04 save percentage – as of now, his value probably isn’t worth more than his current $4.5 million cap hit.

Like any good agent should, Knight’s agent will seek a raise for his client after this season, but the Blackhawks and GM Kyle Davidson have options. Because Knight will be a restricted free agent, the team can give him a one-year qualifying offer worth $4.5 million. This could be useful as it would allow the team to evaluate Knight for another year before committing to him long-term. 

On the flip side, if Knight impresses and Davidson has no doubts that he is the real deal, the team could offer him a max-term, high-salary contract like Bobrovsky's. Perhaps what is most likely, and ideal for both the player and the team, is a one- to two-year bridge deal that takes Knight to free agency but keeps his cap hit somewhere between $4.5 million and whatever his maximum-term number would be. 

What is essential, however, is that Davidson gets this contract right. If he goes short-term with Knight and the player struggles, no harm, no foul. If he fully commits to Knight, that salary must be fair (and ideally a bargain for the Blackhawks) if Davidson wants to bring the Cup back to the Windy City.