Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane were two different cornerstones in the Chicago Blackhawks dynasty. Each player possessed an entirely unique skillset. Toews was the calm, cool, collected and savvy captain who dominated play by shutting down the opposition. Furthermore, he did this without completely sacrificing his offensive game. Kane, on the other hand, possessed the craftiness and offensive instincts of a video game cheat code. With the puck on his stick, defenders retreated back into their own end because if they didn’t, he would make them look silly. It was only fitting that both players inked identical contract extensions worth $84 million over eight seasons in the summer of 2014. With these two mega extensions now finally off the books, even though they weren’t without criticism, both contracts were worth it.
Kane was coming off yet another fantastic point-per-game (P/G) regular season, while Toews was one of the premier two-way players in the game. Having both players in their top-six was one of the biggest reasons why the Blackhawks were about to become a modern-day dynasty. They would go on to win the Stanley Cup in 2015 and cement themselves as the first salary-cap-era dynasty, doing so only a year after the contracts were signed (technically, the contracts hadn’t kicked in yet). The faces of the franchise would now be paid handsomely for all their hard work over the last eight seasons terrorizing the league.
Hindsight Bias and Unraveling a Bigger Picture
Management had to give their superstars a blank check. Toews and Kane had been grossly underpaid for years, and now it was time to pay up. If it wasn’t going to be the Blackhawks, it would have been someone else. General manager Stan Bowman made both players the joint highest salary cap hit of the cap era at the time, a fitting description for two players who helped lead the Blackhawks to unprecedented heights. From an individualistic standpoint, Kane was definitely worth the entirety of his contract. Points are not everything, but it would be irresponsible to ignore all the points he put up. Plain and simply put, Kane was a superstar who lived up to the incredible expectations he had to face.
Hindsight bias on hockey fans will have them claiming that the Toews’ contract was bad from the beginning. However, it’s easy to forget he was thought to be better than Kane by most pundits when he signed it. In a league that was dominated by superstar centres, it made sense to pay Toews the exact same as Kane. Toews tapered off a bit as the contract aged and was not as productive for a couple of seasons. However, the Winnipeg native slowly started to put it back together as the contract came to a close.
Furthermore, it was later revealed that Toews suffered from chronic immune response syndrome — a condition that forced him to miss more than an entire season and had a huge effect on his daily life. For reference, star soccer player Mario Gotze had a very similar career arc to Toews and also has this condition. Gotze was on top of the soccer world and quickly dropped off out of nowhere, only to be revealed that he suffered from the condition. It’s a minor miracle that both players even got back to playing shape. Elite players don’t usually fall off a cliff skill-wise in their prime. It begs the question, how much did this condition affect Toews’ playing ability? Personally, I think it did a lot.
Related: Blackhawks & Jonathan Toews Make Split Amicable
Answering Criticism
Some fans look to blame these contracts for the Blackhawks’ lack of cap space, which prevented their dynasty from winning a fourth Stanley Cup. This point of view has many flaws, as it ignores the Stanley Cup tax that comes with role players overachieving in the playoffs (and pricing themselves out of Chicago), young players’ rookie deals expiring, and the salary cap eventually catching up to them. These all are common problems for Stanley Cup winners.
Just look at previous winners in the Tampa Bay Lightning and the Colorado Avalanche. Yes, both teams are still great in the present day, but they are very top-heavy clubs compared to the extremely deep teams that had won it all. The blame for the Blackhawks falling out of playoff contention was not solely Toews’ fault, and as a result, I still think his contract was worth it.
Signing Off on an Incredible Period of Blackhawks Hockey
These two identical contract extensions were just further proof of how far the Blackhawks dynasty had come. Both players won a Conn Smythe Trophy and currently hold numerous franchise awards and accolades. For such a storied franchise as the Blackhawks, it is extremely fitting that the end of a monumental era will commence with a brand-new era almost immediately.
It’s funny because most hockey fans would probably call Connor Bedard‘s hockey career a large success with just a single Stanley Cup championship. Toews and Kane still face criticism to this day with three rings on their hands. It just goes to show how good they truly were in their prime and how high they raised expectations with their on-ice play. Without a doubt, the Toews and Kane contracts were worth it for the Blackhawks.
