Blackhawks Lock Up Moore For Five More

The Chicago Blackhawks signed forward Oliver Moore to a five-year contract extension on Wednesday, with an average annual value of $ 4.25 million and a total value of $21.25 million. The deal starts with the 2027-28 season and runs through 2031-32, buying out Moore’s remaining restricted free-agent years well before he has to test the market.

Moore, 21, was Chicago’s first-round pick (19th overall) in the 2023 draft out of Mounds View, Minnesota, and he’s moved through the organization about as cleanly as a prospect can. Two gold medals at the World Juniors (2024 and 2025), a Big Ten All-Rookie season at the University of Minnesota, and a smooth landing in the pros: 60 NHL games so far with 5 goals and 18 assists, including a 2025-26 rookie campaign where he ranked third among Chicago’s first-year players in goals, assists, and points despite splitting time with a nine-game AHL stint in Rockford.

He made his NHL debut last March against Utah and scored his first goal in November against Detroit. None of that screams “finished product” yet — this is still a player in the middle of figuring out exactly what kind of NHL center he’s going to be. Chicago decided it didn’t need to wait to find out before committing.

That’s really the story here. This isn’t a bet on Moore becoming a first-line center. It’s a bet on term and value at a position — center depth — that gets expensive fast once a player proves he belongs. Pair this with Frank Nazar’s seven-year, $6.59 million AAV extension from earlier this year, and Chicago now has two of its young centers signed into the early 2030s at cap numbers that will look like bargains the moment either of them takes a real step forward.

My Take

I love the term and the dollars on this one, even if Moore ends up being a third-line center for the life of the deal. That’s not a knock — that’s exactly why this is good value. He’s an elite skater who can flip the ice on any given shift, the kind of player who changes a shift’s momentum just by how fast he closes ice or breaks out of his own zone. That skill set doesn’t need to produce top-six numbers to be worth $4.25 million a year.

And from everything I’ve seen and heard, he’s excellent in the room too — the kind of guy a locker room leans on, which matters just as much for a team still building its identity.

The bigger picture is what this does for Chicago’s flexibility. Locking up Moore for five more years, on top of Nazar’s extension, means the Blackhawks now have real cost certainty at center for the next half-decade. That’s not a small thing for a front office trying to build a competitive roster around its stars — knowing exactly what two of your middle-six centers cost, for years at a time, gives you room to be aggressive elsewhere, whether that’s term for a bigger name down the middle or spending up front on the wings.

Contracts like this one don’t win you a Cup by themselves, but they’re the kind of quiet, sensible depth moves that make the expensive ones possible later.