Joined: Jun. 2018
Posts: 1,187
Likes: 1,550
The only way the Hawks are retaining half on Keith is to get something significantly better then expansion draft fodder (which is all Jones is at this point) and a significantly over priced back up goalie. I could see Hawks retain some on Keith and Oil some on Koskinen to try to smooth out getting to a fair value for each relative to their current role/abilities and trying to get to a fair point for the second year Keith has and Koskinen does not in term for their contracts. Beyond that....Hawks are going to tell Keith we want to help with your goal of getting closer to your son, but we can not do it at the cost of making a move detrimental to the team. At that point he can waive his NMC and get exposed to Seattle who has utter garbage to pick from in expansion from Chicago and the Hawks can get him there with very little if any encouragement needed. Again Hawks will expose an utterly attrocious expansion eligible list to Seattle and Seattle has realistically no cap space issues for the remaining 2 years of Keith and he has an extremely attractive remaining contract in real (not cap) dollars owed. First captain for the organization until you develop an identity and someone to handoff to, you get a big name to sell a few tickets and market around, and a win win for Keith to be close to home if that is a major motivator.