Ouch! First Byfuglein, Eager, Sopel and Frasier, and now Versteeg, Ladd and Burrish

First the Hawks traded Dustin Byfuglien, Ben Eager and Brent Sopel to Atlanta., and Colin Fraser to Edmonton.

Now the Stanley Cup champs have traded Kris Versteeg to Toronto for prospects, and Andrew Ladd to Buffy, Eager and Sopel's new team for defenseman Ivan Visnevskiy and a second round pick in next year's draft.

Meanwhile, free agent Alan Burish has signed a two year contract with Atlanta.

In the short term, he Hawks have gotten considerably less formidable. The good news is that General Manager Stan Bowman has made out like a bandit with the prospects and draft picks resulting in prospects that the trade has yielded. In fact, many who follow such matters closely think that Bowman is handling the cap situation as a whole just fine.

The Hawks will contend for the Cup again next year, but the chances of their successfully defending it have certainly deterriorated. The good news is that the Bowmans are following the same formula with the Hawks that they successfully followed with Detroit when they had their salary gap problems in the wake of their last Stanley Cup. Any falloff in the quality of the team will be temporary. It will be ameliorated to some extent by prospects, some of whom (Jeremy Morin, for example) who have come through those trades, and some (Kyle Beach comes to mind) who the Hawks' own farm system has produced. And in two or three years, the Hawks may actually be a stronger team than they were in the Stanley Cup season just past.