Most of our focus right now for the Blackhawks is on the 2026 NHL Draft, and rightfully so; the Hawks own the No. 4 overall pick and four of the top 45 overall selections. But the Blackhawks are looking to take a step up this coming season and are expected to be aggressive in looking to supplement their NHL roster with players who can help now.
Which leads us to three potential avenues for addition: trades, unrestricted free agents and restricted free agents.
As I peruse the interwebs, whenever I see multiple writers/insiders write about a similar topic at the same time it gets my attention. And, given the coming weeks being intriguing for the Blackhawks, anything that has to do with potentially available players piques my interest.
On Tuesday, both Matt Larkin at Daily Faceoff and Shayna Goldman at The Athletic wrote about potential offer sheet candidates for this coming summer. With the Blackhawks not only sitting on a ton of cap space but also owning enough of their own draft picks in the coming years to fulfill the compensation for an offer sheet, this is a topic we’ve discussed here before.
As a reminder, here are the compensation tiers for potential offer sheets this summer:
Source: PuckPediaAnd, as I noted when we previously touched on the offer sheet idea this summer, the compensation for the dollars attached can also be considered as relative value when considering a potential trade for a player who’s hitting restricted free agency this summer.
When I read thru the lists from Larkin and Goldman, one name hit both of their lists and intrigues me as either a potential offer sheet or trade candidate for the Blackhawks: Florida Panthers right wing Mackie Samoskevich.
IT'S MACKIE SAMOSKEVICH!! pic.twitter.com/dnm287Cwjd
— Florida Panthers (@FlaPanthers) March 7, 2025Why Samoskevich for the Blackhawks?
Samoskevich, 23, was originally the No. 24 overall pick by the Florida Panthers in the 2021 NHL Draft. He’s won a championship with both the Chicago Steel in the USHL and the Panthers in the NHL and played with some top NHL talent in college.
It’s at least worth mentioning that Samoskevich was a teammate of Frank Nazar‘s on the 2022-23 squad at the University of Michigan, albeit that was Nazar’s freshman season that was limited to 13 appearance because of injury. Adam Fantilli was the headliner on that roster.
This portion of Larkin’s write-up got my attention more than him being a former Wolverine:
Samoskevich is progressing nicely but, even on a Panthers team that was riddled with injuries this season, he couldn’t get his TOI even into the 15-minute range. But he’s a talented 23-year-old who sat in the 85th percentile in shots per 60 and the 77th percentile in hits per 60 at 5-on-5 this season among all NHL forwards while possessing 82nd percentile max shot power and 89th percentile max skating speed. There’s potential for growth here, maybe a scoring-line role on a team that could feature him more prominently in the present.
Interestingly — and importantly when considering potential compensation — Goldman notes:
AFP Analytics only projects Mackie Samoskevich’s next deal to carry a $3.08 million cap hit over two years. Evolving-Hockey has an extension coming in at four years with a $4.7 million AAV. … Evolving-Hockey points to a $5.25 million cap hit on a six-year deal if Samoskevich were to sign outside of Florida.
Source: X / @shaynagoldman_While I’m not necessarily sold on a six-year commitment to another forward who needs to have his bucket on to be six-feet tall, there’s some grit to this player that has interested me for some time. And, if he’s going to be locked into a limited role in Florida because of their veteran-heavy roster, there could be a nice opportunity to poach a player with a decent ceiling here.
An offer sheet in the $3M range (based on AFP Analytics’ valuation) would carry just a second-round pick as compensation, while an offer sheet in the $4.7-7.1M AAV range would carry compensation of a first and third round pick. The Panthers do not have a first-round pick in the 2027 or 2028 NHL Drafts (the Blackhawks own their pick in 2027 now from the Seth Jones trade). The Panthers do own their own first-round pick this year and two in the second round.
What makes this a unique situation is the Panthers don’t have many holes on their roster to fill, but… they don’t have a goaltender (thanks for Spencer Knight btw). They could use a few low-cost depth pieces and could probably look to improve a couple spots with veterans who might be ready to be replaced (the two years remaining on Dmitry Kulikov‘s contract are interesting).
Maybe there’s a trade to be made here where the Blackhawks don’t have to offload a first-round pick but can still offer a package that interests Florida’s front office? Could one of the Hawks’ picks in the second-round this year with Arvid Söderblom and the RFA rights to Ethan Del Mastro for the RFA rights to Samoskevich and Kulikov do enough for the Panthers to at least pick up the phone and have a conversation?
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