Blackhawks have an idea of what they want to do with Crawford
Tracey Myers of NHL.com: Corey Crawford is a 35-year old pending unrestricted free agent. Chicago Blackhawks GM Stan Bowman said they have idea of what they want to do.
“I don’t have any announcements to make on what we’re going to do,” Bowman said regarding Crawford. “We have an idea of what we want to do, and we’ll talk to the agents and see where that goes. There’s no question Corey played excellent for us, certainly as the tournament got going and he got more up to speed. He got better as it went along. He came in in a tough situation, hadn’t practiced much coming off his sickness, and full credit to him to get up to speed that quickly. We do have some decisions to make there, but I don’t have much to share with you at this point.”
Crawford went 16-20-3 this season with a 2.77 GAA and a .917 save percentage.
Brent Seabrook is another player that Bowman needs to figure out where he fits in. Seabrook is coming off shoulder and two hip surgeries. He started skating in July but didn’t travel with the team to the bubble. They’ll have a better idea by training camp of what his role might be. Back on July 24th Seabrook said he wasn’t sure where his place was with the team.
Keys to the Montreal Canadiens offseason
Emily Kaplan and Greg Wyshynski of ESPN: Looking at some of the offseason questions and decisions the Montreal Canadiens are facing.
Reevaluate the core forwards – Five of their top six highest paid forwards are Jonathan Drouin, Tomas Tatar, Brendan Gallagher, Max Domi and Phillip Danault. Gallagher and Tatar will be UFAs after next season. Domi is a pending RFA.
Get some size on the wing – The Canadiens were tied for the shortest team in the league last season. Not saying they need to add tough, fourth line players, but more size is needed.
Figure out the left side of their blue line – Ben Chiarot was paired with Shea Weber, Brett Kulak with Jeff Petry, and Xavier Ouellet with Victor Mete. Alexander Romanov will help on the left side, but they still need to find another left-handed Dman.