As Joe discussed earlier today, Cristobal Huet will more or less be smuggled off the Chicago Blackhawks’ salary cap to a foreign league team. That last move will alleviate the team’s biggest remaining cap problems, all for the low-low price of $5.625 million.
One interesting subplot is that Huet would have been willing to renegotiate his contract, if the CBA would allow it. James Mirtle of the Globe and Mail passed along those details from Huet’s agent Steve Bartlett.
“His goal was to stay in the NHL,” Bartlett said. “If there was a way he could have, he would.
“That’s the downside of the inflexibility of the CBA - there’s no ability to renegotiate or for another team to take on a portion of a contract. Financially, you’re well covered, but if your goal is to play in the NHL, you’ve got two hands tied behind your back.”
Bartlett said they were well aware during last season’s Stanley Cup run that Huet’s time in the NHL was likely coming to an end. Including Huet and starting netminder Antti Niemi, the Blackhawks have shed nine regulars from the team that won the championship to get under the cap.
“Clearly Chicago was going to have cap problems and clearly he wasn’t even the No. 1 goalie,” Bartlett said. “And they walked away from their No. 1 goalie (in arbitration) for half the price. I don’t think it took a whole lot of introspection to figure out that we were headed on the fast track to nowhere as far as playing for Chicago this season.”
Huet’s current deal expires after the 2011-12 season, oddly enough just like that Collective Bargaining Agreement. It will be interesting to see if Huet can work his way back into the league in the last couple years. After all, with a career 91.3 save percentage, he’s rarely been horrible. It’s just that he’s nowhere near worth the kind of money he was making.
Either way, it’s a messy situation, but at least it won’t get much uglier. Good luck to Huet in making the best of a tough - if lucrative - situation.