Cowen Chicago Bound, Draper retires

      This morning the Chicago Blackhawks held two separate press conferences. In the first veteran forward Kris Draper announced his retirement. Draper only spent a short time with the Hawks, having been acquired just prior to last season's trade deadline. "Despite only being here a short time Kris' leadership and experienced proved to be a valuable addition. Even though our team fell well short of our ultimate goal the influence he had on our younger players will aid our organization in the years going forward. We would like to congratulate him on his lengthy and succesful career" said GM Todd Semonick.

      In the second announcement of the morning the team announced a sizeable trade that was put together late last night with the Dallas Stars. Hawks management thought they had a deal in place involving some of the assets moved with a 3rd party, however that deal fell apart when that team inexplicably pulled out after an agreement was seemingly in place. Ultimately this proved to be a positive as a more substantial deal with Dallas was reached shortly thereafter. The Hawks sent the teams first round pick (17th overall) in this summer's draft, along with prospects Colby Robak, Ethan Werek, and Mike Murphy to Dallas in exchange for top prospect Jared Cowen, a 2nd round pick in this summer's draft, as well as 3rd and 5th round picks in the 2012 entry draft.

     The Hawks shipped out a pile of assets, however a player with Cowen's enormous upside is a catch worth paying for. The 6'5 225 pound defenceman projects to be a two way force at the NHL level. He combines great mobility for his size with above average puck skills and terrific hockey sense. The only thing somewhat lacking in his game is nastiness, though thats certainly not to say he is soft. After dominating at the junior level Cowen will no doubt get a very long look at training camp, and could be ready as soon as next season. He joins Victor Hedman, Kevin Shattenkirk and Brandon Gormley at the top of the organizations blueline pipeline, a group that is surely the envy of the league. The stable of prospects is especially impressive given the team's top 6 at the pro level are all rising stars under the age of 30 (Duncan Keith, Alex Edler, Ryan Suter, Jay Bouwmeester, Jack Johnson and Braydon Coburn). Add to them the aforementioned 4, and a number of other promising blueliners including Alexander Urbom, Taylor Doherty, Alex Petrovic, Brian Dumoulin, Jake Muzzin, and Stephen Johns and the team looks like it will be loaded on the back end well into the future.

     After a dissapointing finish this move is not expected to be the last, it is rumoured the team would like to make a play to re-acquire a 1st round pick in the 20-30 range, also a major roster shakeup is expected.