Blackhawks sign stud goaltender Robin Lehner, casting Corey Crawford’s future into question

Lehner recorded a .930 save percentage with the Islanders in 2018-19, ranking second in the NHL.

Robin Lehner is a top-tier NHL goaltender and an inspirational person.

But a Blackhawk? That’s a new adjective no one expected.

The Hawks signed the former soon-to-be 28-year-old goaltender to a one-year, $5 million contract in the waning hours of the afternoon Monday, stunning the hockey world both with the terms of the contract — Lehner was expected to command several years at an equal-or-higher cap hit — and by signing him at all.

Make no mistake, Lehner is an elite talent at a position that’s hard to develop and even harder to forecast.

He ranked second in the NHL last season with a .930 save percentage, playing a huge role in the upstart Islanders’ turnaround and earning him Vezina Trophy finalist status. He didn’t take home the Vezina, but he did land the Masterton Trophy for his perseverance through mental illness, and delivered arguably the most consequential speech in NHL Awards history.

Lehner’s great season was no flash in the pan, either. He also posted save percentages of .920 or better in two of his previous three seasons (all with the Sabres), and entered the summer with a .918 career save percentage, significantly above the league average of .910.

Lehner turning aside Marcus Kruger while with the Sabres in 2017.

He’s a transformative addition to the Blackhawks, which seemed on track for another boringly quiet July 1st until all hell broke loose after 4 p.m. CT.

And the one-year nature of his contract means that, while he does use up the rest of the Hawks’ remaining cap space for 2019-20, he won’t be an inescapable burden when Alex DeBrincat and Dylan Strome necessitate massive raises next summer.

But his addition spells bad news either for Corey Crawford, or Collin Delia, or both — and unless Crawford is dealing with more health problems this summer that are being kept under wraps, those are two players who probably weren’t expecting bad news Monday.

Crawford has started just 27 and 39 games the past two seasons, respectively, while battling through a parade of injuries. He limped to a 14-18-5 record and .908 save percentage in 2018-19, dropping his career average down to .918 — the same as Lehner. He’s also seven years older than the newest Hawks goalie and facing free agency come 2020, just as Lehner will be.

Crawford’s future in Chicago has been discussed much over the past two years, with varying degrees of confidence, but the Hawks organization has never taken any steps to indicate they had a plan B if he continued to decline — until Monday. The competition for the starting job come September will now be fascinating.

In the short term, however, it could be Delia who gets left out of the party.

The 25-year-old seemed on track to occupy the backup job in 2019-20 after a better-than-it-looks .908 save percentage and 6-4-3 record in 2018-19, for which he received a three-year contract extension.

Now, Delia seems like the latest version of Anton Forsberg, who ended up stuck in Rockford last year despite great AHL results and was subsequently traded last week.