Blackhawks have asked Brent Seabrook to waive his no trade.

This may truly mark the end of an era in Chicago.

Obviously things have not gone as well as the Chicago Blackhawks and general manager Stan Bowman would have liked over the past two seasons and it now seems that those poor results have resulted in the veteran general manager taking drastic steps to improve his team. One of those drastic steps was the firing of head coach Joel Quenneville earlier in the season and now it sounds like Bowman is attempting to move one of the organizations most well established players in a trade deal.

According to a recent report From Sportsnet National Hockey League insider Elliotte Friedman the Chicago Blackhawks have approached veteran defenseman Brent Seabrook and asked him to waive his no trade clause in order to facilitate his move out of Chicago for the organization. It's a shocking announcement on a number of levels and one that indicates that there may be some real big changes coming to the Blackhawks organization.

"The last one I wanted to mention Ron, Brent Seabrook," said Friedman during the Headlines segment. "There's been a lot of talk this week about Duncan Keith, the Blackhawks have gone to Brent Seabrook and asked would he be willing to waive his no move clause. To this point he has said no, he loves being a Blackhawk, he doesn't want to do that but I think they may still check around to see the market.

First and foremost the move comes as a shock if only due to the fact that Seabrook is not only a lifetime member of the Chicago Blackhawks organization, but was also viewed by many as one of the key components in the Blackhawks dynasty that captured 3 Stanley Cup Championships in not to distant history. You would think that level of success alone would buy you some leeway but it now appears as if the Blackhawks are fully reading to move on from Seabrook. In fact the only player who has played more games than Seabrook in a Blackhawks uniform is none other than Blackhawks legend Stan Mikita, again making this decision very surprising indeed.

Additionally the move comes as a surprise if only because of how difficult Seabrook is likely to be to trade at all. Seabrook carries a cap hit of $6.875 million per season through the 2023-2024 season and given his slumping performance it's hard to imagine any team that would want to pay that price for that long. That being said the mere fact that the request was made is perhaps an indication that Stan Bowman believes he can get the deal done.

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