Blackhawks re-sign goalie Arvid Soderblom to two-year contract

The Blackhawks settled on a new contract with goalie Arvid Soderblom on Saturday, two days prior to his scheduled arbitration hearing.

Those hearings can often lead to frayed relationships between teams and players, so it's probably wise that they did. It's what happens most of the time around the league.

Soderblom, who had been a restricted free agent, got a two-year contract with a $2.75 million salary-cap hit, a source confirmed to the Sun-Times.

That's a slightly higher number than expected, but it doesn't matter much considering the Hawks remain $18.7 million below the cap, per PuckPedia.

The big Swede, who will turn 26 next month, had dominated the AHL yet struggled in the NHL prior to last season, but he took a significant step forward in the NHL in 2024-25. In 36 appearances, he went 10-18-7 with an .898 save percentage (just below the declining league average of .900) with a minus-2.3 GSAA (also just below league average).

"If you look at the big picture, I feel like it was a solid year," Soderblom said in April. "[I learned to] just trust my game and not try to chase anything or get rattled with results. This year, no matter what happened — win, loss, bad goal, big save — I was even-keel."

He is penciled in as the Hawks' backup in 2025-26 behind Spencer Knight, who has one year left with a $4.5 million cap hit as a pending RFA himself.

If veteran Laurent Brossoit — who also has one contract year left — is finally healthy, he could complicate the goaltending situation a bit.

The Hawks have one RFA left unsigned: defenseman Wyatt Kaiser, who didn't have arbitration rights. Expect that contract to get sorted out sometime before training camp.