No dynasty in Chicago

Is the Chicago Blackhawks Stanley Cup window already closing?

Hard to say at this point but if there is one problem with a hard salary cap it's that teams cannot stay together. Yes, the Blackhawks still have Jonathan Toews, Patrick Kane, Duncan Keith and Brent Seabrook but with an untenable cap situation, they have already begun the dismantling. Today, they traded Dustin Byfuglien to Atlanta.

Byfuglien was only the game-changer for Chicago in the playoffs. His play turned around two series (the West Semifinal against Vancouver and the Stanley Cup Final against Philadelphia). After Toews, he was almost certainly their most valuable player during the playoff run. And now he goes to the Thrashers, a franchise that has made the playoffs only once in its history and never won even a single playoff game. America probably won't hear from Byfuglien for three or four years, when he finally moves on to a franchise that plays games in the spring.

Also going to Atlanta are Ben Eager, Brent Sopel and prospect Akim Aliu. Chicago gets the 24th and 54th picks in Friday night's draft, Marty Reasoner (who played poorly for Blackhawks coach Joel Quenneville earlier in his career when both were with St. Louis) and prospect Jeremy Morin. The Blackhawks get to save just over $5 million in cap space with this deal, enabling them to try and re-sign goaltneder Antti Niemi and defenseman Niklas Hjalmarsson, among other restricted free agents.

Given the way the NHL seems to work now, where hot goalies seem to be more important than good ones, I'm not so sure I wouldn't have just let Niemi go if I were Chicago and signed someone like Marty Biron to pair with Cristobal Huet in goal. But what do I know? It will be interesting to see how the Blackhawks forwards do next spring because this spring, Byfuglien was clearly the catalyst among that group.