The Chicago Blackhawks solved some salary cap issues, trading Cam Barker and his 3 year, $9.25 million contract to the Minnesota Wild for Kim Johnnson and Nick Leddy (1st rounder in 2009).

 I’ll tell you, I like Cam Barker a lot.  He’s big (6-foot-3, 213), skates well, and can dangle from the point on the power-play.  The 23-year-old was the distributor on the ‘Hawks pp last season, but has digressed with just 4 goals and ten assists so far in 2009-2010. 

In a sense he’s expendable, with Brent Seabrooke, Duncan Keith, and Brian Campbell logging lots of minutes in Chicago.  But it must be difficult for the ‘Hawks to part with their former 3rd overall pick, who still has so much up-side.

Yeah, they receive a prospect in return (Leddy has one goal and four helpers in 19 games at the University of Minnesota), and Kim Johnsson is a veteran who will help hold down the fort, but I’m going to give the victory to the Wild.  They may have grabbed a future all-star.  If Barker is free in your pool I would take a good look for the stretch run.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 12th, 2010 at 5:50 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.