Nearly a decade ago, the Chicago Blackhawks were trading away prospects to get under the ceiling. Now they’re doing it to reach the cap floor.
That is what was largely behind the Blackhawks’ trade on Thursday with the San Jose Sharks. The Blackhawks dealt goalie Laurent Brossoit, defenseman Nolan Allan and a 2028 seventh-round pick to the Sharks for defensemen Ryan Ellis and Jake Furlong and a 2028 fourth-round pick.
Allan, a 22-year-old defenseman prospect with 43 NHL career games, has the most likely long-term upside of the players in the exchange, but the Blackhawks were fine with that. Ellis — or more specifically, his contract — was the main reason they made the deal. Although Ellis hasn’t played since the 2021-22 season due to a pelvis injury and is not expected to play again, his contract remains active and carries a $6.25 million cap hit until the end of the 2026-27 season.
General manager Kyle Davidson’s goal is to build an NHL team mostly through the Blackhawks’ pipeline. They’ve been doing that more and more in the last few years, and it’s been their own prospects who are beginning to comprise the bulk of the NHL roster. The lineup against the St. Louis Blues on Wednesday was made up of 11 Blackhawks draft picks. Four of those players were Davidson’s selections in the last four drafts, and two more, Connor Bedard and Frank Nazar, are expected to return to the lineup from injuries soon.
Davidson plans to follow that blueprint even more in the coming years. You can expect another quiet offseason. Next season, he likely adds at least two more of his draft picks to the Blackhawks’ lineup with Anton Frondell, a 2025 first-round pick, and Roman Kantserov, a 2023 second-round pick, likely coming over to North America from Sweden and Russia and jumping into the NHL lineup right away. Sacha Boisvert and Marek Vanacker, two 2024 first-round picks, might not be that far behind.
The challenge for Davidson, at least for now, is trying to balance a roster of so many promising young players who are either on their first or second NHL contracts with the requirement of reaching the NHL salary cap floor. The cap floor for the 2025-26 season was $70.6 million, with a ceiling of $95.5 million. Next season, the floor is expected to rise to about $77 million, with the ceiling projected to be at $104 million.
The Blackhawks currently possess a $82.49 million team cap hit, according to PuckPedia, but they have a lot of money coming off the books this summer with six veterans on expiring contracts. Those players include Nick Foligno ($4.5 million), Connor Murphy ($4.4 million), Jason Dickinson ($4.25 million), Ilya Mikheyev ($4,037,500), Sam Lafferty ($2 million) and Matt Grzelcyk ($1 million). The Blackhawks also hold Shea Weber’s contract, which has a $7,857,143 cap hit, this season, though like Ellis, Weber isn’t expected to play again due to injury. Weber’s contract, which the Blackhawks acquired last season, expires after this season. Plus, the Blackhawks will also drop $2.975 million of T.J. Brodie’s buyout. All of that comes to $31,019,643.
The Blackhawks don’t need to match that number, but they do need enough cap to get to next season’s cap floor. This is their projected roster of players already signed for next season along with their cap hits.
2026-27 projected roster
Forwards (10)
Frank Nazar — $6,599,991
André Burakovsky — $5.5 million
Tyler Bertuzzi — $5.5 million
Teuvo Teravainen — $5.4 million
Ryan Donato — $4 million
Anton Frondell — $975,000
Ryan Greene — $950,000
Oliver Moore — $941,667
Landon Slaggert — $900,000
Nick Lardis — $865,000
Defensmen (5)
Alex Vlasic — $4.6 milion
Wyatt Kaiser — $1.7 milion
Artyom Levshunov — $975,000
Sam Rinzel — $941,667
Louis Crevier — $900,000
Goalies (2)
Spencer Knight — $5,833,333
Arvid Soderblom — $2.75 million
All those contracts add up $49,331,658. That puts them about $28 million short of the expected floor. They do still have $258,333 to pay of Brodie’s buyout next season and are still retaining $2.5 million of Seth Jones’ cap hit. Now they have also Ellis’ contract. Those three cap hits equal $9,008,333. That brings them to being about $19 million short of the floor.
Of course, we’ve yet to discuss Bedard’s second contract, which will begin next season. We took a dive into that earlier this season, but the main takeaway is he’s expected to sign for more than $10 million. It will depend on how long Bedard wants to sign for, but his contract should make up for more than half of that $19 million. There’s the possibility the Blackhawks might only need about $5 million or so to reach the floor.
That is much easier to make up. Colton Dach and Kevin Korchinski, two more players who could be in the NHL next season, are due second contracts. Kantserov needs to sign an entry-level contract and that will likely include a $1 million cap hit. There’s also the chance the Blackhawks re-sign one of their veterans; Mikheyev may make sense. The Blackhawks will also want to round out their roster with at least a seventh defenseman and 13th forward. They could look at adding cheap veterans for that. Between all of that, the Blackhawks should easily make up that deficit and surpass the cap floor.
Come the 2027-28 season, Davidson isn’t expected to have such a problem any longer. Levshunov, Kaiser, Crevier, Rinzel, Moore, Greene and Slaggert will be due new contracts as restricted free agents. Those deals, plus the other ones already done, should add up to the cap floor and beyond quickly.
For now, though, Davidson has to be creative to keep his NHL roster as young as he’d prefer while staying cap compliant.