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Brent Seabrook and Chicago officially agree to five year extension; Back to salary cap hell?

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After the reports circled yesterday about Brent Seabrook being close to signing an extension with the Chicago Blackhawks, it became a reality today. Seabrook officially signed his five-year extension with Chicago today as the team made the announcement this afternoon.

While the Blackhawks didn’t release any details about the contract, TSN’s Bob McKenzie reports the deal is worth $29 million, good for a cap hit of $5.8 million per year for the next five seasons. If you’re thinking that’s a lot of cheese for Seabrook, you’re right. If you’re also thinking that it sounds like sketchy accounting for the Blackhawks and GM Stan Bowman, you’d be right again.

CapGeek.com shows that Chicago has just 12 players under contract for next season and those 12 account for more than $49 million against the cap. Approximately $23.5 million of that is now tied up with six defensemen. In case you forgot how things went down with Chicago after winning the Stanley Cup last season, they essentially had to gut their championship roster to get under the salary cap this season. Dustin Byfuglien, Andrew Ladd, Antti Niemi, and Brent Sopel were all goners after last year for financial reasons.

Even with the salary cap being rumored to go up anywhere from $2-$3 million next season, that gives Chicago $12-$13 million in cap space to sign at least eight players. While we don’t want to doubt that Stan Bowman has a plan here, we can’t help but wonder if he’s just working with a really broken calculator when calculating his deals for players. Contracts for Brian Campbell, Marian Hossa, Dave Bolland, and Duncan Keith are all huge deals and weigh against the salary cap in huge ways. Granted these guys are all major contributors to the team, limiting your team to having little cap flexibility and no depth doesn’t sound like a recipe for success. As it is this season, the Blackhawks are fighting to just get in the playoffs at all.

Unless Bowman has a magic plan to get Brian Campbell’s cap number reduced or to get him off the team, it’s tough to imagine just what the Hawks will do in free agency in the off-season and in the years to come. We don’t feel sympathetic towards Chicago or Stan Bowman, they got their prize last year. Now we’re eager to see just what happens next with the team to see how they get themselves out of yet another self-made mess.