All Things NHL
The Chicago Blackhawks and Annti Niemi are in a salary arbitration as we speak. It is widely believed that if the ruling is for over $2M Per than the Hawks will either walk away or trade Niemi. Now here comes the difficult part for the Hawks, If you do not resign him and you trade him away, what do you do for the starting goalie postion this season ?
Well there are acouple different options that the Hawks can work with. First, Marty Turco has been sitting on free agency due to his high priced contract demand. Something tells me that if he wants to find work then he will be accepting a $2-$2.5M per year deal somewhere. There is also the option of Jose Theodore which is pretty much in the same boat as Turco. After trouble getting their number 1 goalie signed the Canadiens are looking at possibly trading away Carey Price. That is another option that Stan Bowman should at the very least look into.
With all the things that have not really gone the Hawks way this summer, something tells me that the goalie situation is going to work out in their favor. It just may not be with the stanley cup winning goalie Annti Niemi...
** UPDATE **
The Chicago Blackhawks have decided to walk away from the arbitration awarded to Antti Niemi and sign goalie Marty Turco to a 1 year deal. Antti Niemi now sits on the Free Agents list waiting to be signed by another team, and beleive me there are alot of teams thinking about making a move to sign the young netminder.