The Blackhawks will officially announce the looming contract extensions of Patrick Kane, Jonathan Toews and Duncan Keith tomorrow afternoon. A press conference will be held at 2 P.M. at the United Center. There haven’t been any reports as to who was moved to create enough ‘tagging’ room, but that news probably won’t come out until tomorrow. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for Dustin Byfuglien.

It’s being reported that Toews and Kane have identical five-year deals in place at $6.3M per year, and Keith will be locked up for thirteen years at $5.54M per year. Those numbers seem to be a little rich for my taste. The extensions of the big three will add an extra $18.14M on next year’s cap total.

Nhlnumbers.com has the Blackhawks committed to $42.473 next season. With the addition of the extensions of Kane, Toews and Keith, the Blackhawks will be on the books for about $60.5M. In order to stay within the NHL’s ‘tagging’ rules the Blackhawks will need to shed about $4M of cap-space to stay under the $56.8M ceiling – that is if all the numbers are correct.