What is Blackhawks' approach leading up to trade deadline?

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It's trade deadline week. Rumors will begin to intensify around the NHL with teams finalizing which of their unrestricted free agents are available and which are not.

For example, there were 12 scouts/representatives at Monday's Blackhawks-Senators game in Chicago because Ottawa possesses two of the most coveted players on the market in Matt Duchene and Mark Stone. The Senators essentially hold all the cards. Once that big domino falls, the rest will follow, perhaps rather quickly.

But that's more for the buyers. What are the Blackhawks?

With another win on Monday, they pulled within one point of the final wild card spot and have important games on the horizon, most notably home tilts against Colorado and Dallas.

It’s unlikely the Blackhawks will be buyers. They’re not in a position yet to be giving up future draft picks or prospects for rentals, even if they find themselves sitting inside the playoff picture on trade deadline day Feb. 25. The question is, will they avoid being sellers?

The Blackhawks have three players on their current 23-man roster who are set to become UFAs this summer: Marcus Kruger, Chris Kunitz and Cam Ward.

Six will be restricted free agents: Carl Dahlstrom, Gustav Forsling, David Kampf, Slater Koekkoek, Brendan Perlini and Dylan Sikura. John Hayden, who has another year on his contract before he becomes a RFA, has drawn interest.

Some of those players could be appealing to teams trying to fill out their depth for a low price.

Artem Anisimov, whose name has been floated out there, is probably more likely to be moved in the summer when his modified no trade clause turns into nothing on July 1. He also will earn a $2 million signing bonus on July 1, meaning his remaining salary will be only $5 million but cap hit remains $4.55 million over the next two seasons. That may become an attractive type of contract to take on for a lower budget team trying to meet the floor because Anisimov can be an effective player in the right situation.

Perhaps the Blackhawks will stay the course and sell off their spare parts, gather futures and create roster spots for the young guys down the stretch. Or maybe they’ll stand pat and ride it out with this current group. The underwhelming depth of this year's Western Conference has allowed themselves to ask these questions they maybe didn’t think they’d have to answer.

"It's been an interesting year for sure," Patrick Kane said. "If you talked to a lot of us 15-20 games ago, you'd probably think we all thought we'd be out of playoffs or we'd have to go on some big runs and some crazy numbers to get ourselves in. It's pretty crazy how everything's unfolded here. But what a great position we're in — a few points behind a wild-card spot and we play some of these teams down the stretch, too. So it'll be an interesting finish to the season."

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