Pretty interesting story from late last night involving the Blackhawks and several qualifying offers:

Sources tell TSN the NHL and the NHLPA are investigating what might have been an enormous mistake by the Chicago Blackhawks.

Chicago tendered qualifying offers to several key players this week, including Kris Versteeg, Cam Barker, Ben Eager, Colin Fraser, Aaron Johnson and Troy Brouwer, however the investigation underway is to determine whether the qualifying offers were filed correctly.

If not, there is the remote possibility the qualifying offers could be ruled invalid and the players listed above, conceivably, could be deemed unrestricted free agents because of the blunder.

Early indications are that this won't be a major issue, although Johnson's agent, Allan Walsh, offered these thoughts on Twitter a few hours after the TSN story came out:

I don't see those messages on his account this morning, so I suppose they were deleted. (Maybe this all isn't such a debacle after all?) Still, it seems like poor organization on the 'Hawks part to not ensure everything was filed well ahead of time.

Tom Benjamin says GM Dale Tallon should bear the brunt of the blame.