from Barry Rozner of the Chicago Daily-Herald,

As for Artem Anisimov, why the rush to give him five years and $23 million a day after arriving in the Brandon Saad deal? The Hawks have not won a playoff series since he arrived, though it's hardly all on Anisimov.

Did the Hawks really need to give 30-year-old Brent Seabrook eight years and $55 million in the fall of 2015? Granted, it's easier to do when you've won three Stanley Cups in six seasons, but that was a shocker.

And then there's Marcus Kruger, who got three years and $9 million in March 2016, six months after signing for a year and $1.5 million, and having missed most of the first half of that season with a wrist injury.

Again, easy to look past the good deals and wonder why the bad ones occurred, but now Kruger is probably on his way out of town and it may cost the Hawks another player the way Teuvo Teravainen was sent to Carolina with Bickell's contract.

The talk in NHL circles is that the Hawks are trying to get Vegas to take Kruger's contract, but that the Hawks might have to give them another player in the process....

The Hawks are about $3 million over the cap for next season right now after signing Richard Panik for two years at $2.8 million annually, and Panik -- who would have been a restricted free agent July 1 -- was startled the Hawks came at him so hard.

"I was waiting for the first offer to come in and the first one they gave me was surprising, so there wasn't much thinking about if I was going to sign it," Panik said on a conference call with the media. "I was really happy to get the first offer."

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