Spotlight on
Blackhawks goalies Cristobal Huet and Nikolai Khabibulin
Joel Quenneville inherits a strange goaltending situation in Chicago, but he should be used to that by now.
This time, he has two veteran goalies whose contracts call for them to make a combined $12.3 million this season, and the Blackhawks spent much of the preseason hoping Khabibulin would just go away, to Russia, or that someone would take him and his contract off their hands. They put him on waivers in late September and, not surprisingly, nobody claimed him.
Huet signed a four-year, $22.5 million deal as an unrestricted free agent in July.
Khabibulin is in the final year of the four-year, $27 million contract he signed coming out of the lockout.
Huet and Khabibulin alternated the first four games, heading into Saturday night’s meeting with the Blues in St. Louis. Khabibulin was the better of the two, with a 2.53 goals-against average and a .922 saves percentage, although it certainly isn’t much of a body of work at this point. Huet was below the Hardy Astrom saves percentage line, at .893, and had a 2.89 goals-against average.
There are several ways to look at the Hawks’ crease picture, including the likelihood it will increase their chances of being able to find a taker for Khabibulin if they play him enough and he plays well enough to convince other teams he still has something left at age 35. He helped the Tampa Bay Lightning to the Stanley Cup in 2004, but has been inconsistent during his 160 games the past three seasons in Chicago. He also has had injury problems.
Khabibulin’s contract also will be less onerous as the season continues, and if he sticks around with the Hawks, he could end up a hot rental property at the trading deadline.
If nobody gets desperate before then.
