{"id":139030,"date":"2025-07-26T17:45:10","date_gmt":"2025-07-26T17:45:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/139030\/"},"modified":"2025-07-26T17:45:10","modified_gmt":"2025-07-26T17:45:10","slug":"blackhawks-arvid-soderblom-avoid-arbitration-with-two-year-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/139030\/","title":{"rendered":"Blackhawks, Arvid S\u00f6derblom Avoid Arbitration With Two-Year Deal"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Blackhawks and goaltender\u00a0Arvid S\u00f6derblom<\/a>\u00a0won\u2019t need the arbitration hearing they had scheduled<\/a> for Monday. They\u2019ve settled on a two-year deal paying the restricted free agent an average annual value of $2.75MM, the team announced<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>S\u00f6derblom, who turns 26 in August, had set himself up well in contract talks this summer after something of a breakout season in 2024-25. An undrafted free agent signed by Chicago out of the SHL\u2019s Skellefte\u00e5 AIK in 2021, the Gothenburg native started a career-high 33 games with a 10-18-7 record, .898 SV%, 3.18 GAA, and 16 quality starts.<\/p>\n

While those numbers don\u2019t jump off the page, it\u2019s important to put them in context with the Hawks\u2019 poor defense last season. S\u00f6derblom had the seventh-highest expected goals against average (3.20) of any NHL netminder to play at least 30 games last season, so his performance still came in better than expected with 1.0 GSAx and 0.16 wins above replacement on the year, according to MoneyPuck<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Assuming he can keep that up, S\u00f6derblom has cemented himself as a fine 1B\/backup option in Chicago who may still have some room to grow. His performance was leaps and bounds better after a 2023-24 campaign that saw him struggle in his first chance as a full-time NHLer, posting a 5-22-2 record with a .879 SV% and 3.92 GAA in 32 appearances.<\/p>\n

Even if veteran backup\u00a0Laurent Brossoit<\/a>\u00a0is ready to play this season after missing all of 2024-45 with a knee injury, S\u00f6derblom should still be penciled in as the primary backup to emerging starter\u00a0Spencer Knight<\/a>\u00a0on Chicago\u2019s opening night roster. If there was any doubt beforehand, the Blackhawks\u2019 willingness to pay him an AAV in the high $2MM range on a pre-hearing settlement indicates that\u2019s the role they envision him playing.<\/p>\n

The new deal barely puts a dent in Chicago\u2019s practically infinite cap space at this stage of the offseason, still leaving them with $18.6MM in space with an open roster spot, per PuckPedia<\/a>. The Blackhawks\u2019 lone remaining unsigned RFA is defenseman\u00a0Wyatt Kaiser<\/a>,\u00a0who was neither arbitration nor offer sheet-eligible this summer.<\/p>\n

S\u00f6derblom\u2019s settlement walks him to unrestricted free agency in 2027. The first three of seven arbitration hearings have now been settled; the next unsettled one on the docket is Jets defenseman\u00a0Dylan Samberg<\/a>\u00a0on July 30.<\/p>\n

Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet<\/a> was the first to report the deal.<\/p>\n

Image courtesy of Kim Klement Neitzel-Imagn Images.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Blackhawks and goaltender\u00a0Arvid S\u00f6derblom\u00a0won\u2019t need the arbitration hearing they had scheduled for Monday. They\u2019ve settled on a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":139031,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[377],"tags":[6510,491,96,5,30,405],"class_list":{"0":"post-139030","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-hockey","8":"tag-arbitration","9":"tag-arvid-soderblom","10":"tag-chicago-blackhawks","11":"tag-hockey","12":"tag-newsstand","13":"tag-transactions"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/114920785488863840","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139030","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139030"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139030\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/139031"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}