Blackhawks take care of 5 restricted free agents, NHLPA grieves

Written by Chris Block

Monday, 06 July 2009 17:00

Blackhawks announced today they’ve reached terms with five of their eight restricted free agents.

Ben Eager, Colin Fraser and Aaron Johnson all signed one-year contracts.

Corey Crawford and Troy Brouwer received two-year deals. Blackhawks Press Release. The Chicago Tribune’s Chris Kuc was first to report new deals for Fraser, Eager and Brouwer late this morning. You can now follow the Kuc on Twitter at Twitter.com/ChrisKuc. News of Johnson and Crawford came late this afternoon when the Hawks issued their press release.

What we know so far as far as details on the contracts.

Eager – 1 year - $965,000
Fraser – 1 year - $700,000
Johnson – 1 year - ???
Crawford – 2 years - ???
Brouwer – 2 years - $1,025,000 per year

All are one-way deals which means they earn full value on the contract no matter if they’re in Rockford or on the Blackhawks’ roster.

This leaves minor league left wing Bryan Bickell, Kris Versteeg and Cam Barker as the remaining restricted free agents who are still without deals.

Versteeg and Barker may be in for a bit of a wait however. The NHL Player’s Association today filed a grievance on behalf of Versteeg and Barker as the NHLPA believes the failure on the Hawks’ part to adhere to guidelines established by the collective bargaining agreement in notifying those players of qualifying offers by the June 29^th 4pm (central time) deadline should therefore render Barker and Versteeg un-restricted free agents. The case will now go before an independent arbitrator with the NHL arguing on behalf of the Blackhawks.

We know several Blackhawks, including Barker and Versteeg, did not receive notice of those qualifying offers by the deadline. The Blackhawks say the offers were postmarked and mailed on June 29^th, though that method of delivery is in direct violation of the CBA. An error by someone inside the hockey operations staff could potentially cost the Blackhawks their two top ‘restricted’ free agents.

Other trivial notes from today….

Cristobal Huet is changing his sweater number from 38 to 39 with Nikolai Khabibulin now out of the picture.

John Madden is getting his number 11. Jack Skille, who had been wearing the number on call-ups (he wore 12 with Rockford), switches to 20.

Not that it means much, but Kyle Beach did wear #12 at day one of prospect camp Monday. 2009 first round pick Dylan Olsen wore 17 and Billy Sweatt donned number 29.

-- The Hawks officially lost two of their un-restricted free agents today. Both Tim Brent and Pascal Pelletier signed 1-year, two-way (NHL/AHL) contracts; Brent with the Toronto Maple Leafs and Pelletier with Columbus. Nothing official, but money for each is believed to be in the 500-550k range.

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