The Chicago Blackhawks have had a very good offseason so far. They re-signed a number of young players, who were part of their core last year, and they also added an 80-point guy in Marian Hossa.

Hossa is now locked in for 12 years, and think of that contract what you want, but in the short term, Hossa is going to be a very valuable member to a team that lacked just a little bit of punch on the second line.

More importantly, they stole him away from the Detroit Red Wings, who are a chief rival and obviously the team that the Blackhawks lost to in the Western Conference Finals.

The Stanley Cup odds look good for the Blackhawks but right now they are in a bit of a cap crunch.

As of right now, the Blackhawks are over the salary cap and while they have plenty of time to fix the situation, right now they have to figure out what to do.

They are roughly 1.4 million over and this type of mismanagement – along with a near catastrophe of not qualifying a number of their young players – cost general manager Dale Tallon his job.

One move the Blackhawks could make without hurting their Stanley Cup odds would be trading away Patrick Sharp. Sharp has a $4 million cap hit and moving him would free up the Blackhawks to make some other roster moves to fill out their squad.