Rumors VIII: Panthers and Blackhawks

“I like to think outside the box,” Tallon said. “You never know what we’re going to do. It’s the fun part of the job, draft day, the things that can and will go on. But I like to think outside the box and take some risks, and so it’ll be interesting to see what happens.”

Tallon thinks they have a lot of the right pieces in place and might now be able to look for specific needs and not just getting the best player available.

“Right now, we’re strong up the middle and the back end,” Tallon said. “So we’re going to focus on our needs and obviously speed and scoring are two things. If you saw the finals, there was a lot of speed. There wasn’t a lot of scoring, but there was a lot of chances. So that’s the important part for us, look at our depth chart and add pieces where we know we’re weak.”

“There are going to be some changes, but that’s the same thing for every team,” Bowman said. “Nobody brings back the same exact team. There are a lot of things we haven’t quite locked down yet. We’re going to do our best to keep the guys that we can.”

The Blackhawks already have $64 million in cap space committed to only 14 players. It would be hard for them to bring back any of their unrestricted free agents – Johnny Oduya, Antoine Vermette, Andrew Desjardins, Michal Rozsival, Brad Richards and Daniel Carcillo would appear difficult.

Names that could be moved to help free up some cap space include: Patrick Sharp ($5.9 million cap hit), Bryan Bickell ($4 million), Kris Versteeg ($2.2 million) and even starting goaltender Corey Crawford ($6 million).

“Right now, I’m not really thinking about it,” Sharp said. “People know what’s going to happen with the salary cap. It’s the third time we’ve gone through it. That’s the tough part of pro sports, no question. It feels a lot better when you win a championship and there’s turnover in the locker room. We’ll see what happens, we’ll cross that bridge.”