THE BLACKHAWKS’ ‘CAP CRISIS’: FACT OR FICTION?

Hockey writers looking to fill their columns and generate eyeballs, find few easier ways these days, than to zero in on the so-called “Cap Crisis”. Per the pundits, the sky is about to fall in on teams as their salaries smash up against a steel ceiling, their rosters set to implode as the time bomb ticks. The Chicago Blackhawks are a favorite target for sensation-seeking scribes. The scenarios they paint have rivals licking their chops as Hawks’ GM Stan Bowman pounds his calculator furiously, trying in vain to find ways to keep his treasured stars, Jonathan Toews, Patrick Kane and Duncan Keith secure within the Hawkey Flock. Prognosticators conjure up a disaster in the making, the high-flying Hawks suddenly crashing back to Earth. Discussion boards are fired up, and the fur flies as they fulminate. But is this fact, or fiction formulated by hockey hacks and fuelled by frantic fans? Taking a closer look at the landscape, there is as usual, a story behind ‘the story’…