Brian Campbell: ‘I can’t put a price tag on how happy we are’

For some players, the NHL’s three-day Christmas break can be almost as tiring as the regular season — a game the night before, a flight from their in-season home to their actual home on Christmas Eve, the usual fun and aggravation of the holiday, then a flight back for a game on Dec. 27.

All Brian Campbell will have to do this year is make his usual 25-minute commute from the United Center to his home in Western Springs on Friday night.

That, in essence, is what Campbell paid for when he left millions of dollars on the table in Florida to return to Chicago, his wife Lauren’s hometown, and a city that never stopped tugging his sleeve.

“I wouldn’t change anything at all,” Campbell said. “I’m lucky. I can’t put a price tag on how happy we are as a family. Money — I’ve been lucky in my career to play a long time and make some money. I was in a situation where I was able to do something like this, and I’m lucky to be in this situation.”

Campbell made more than $57 million over the past seven seasons, and is still earning $2.25 million this season — a $1.5 million salary and a $750,000 games-played bonus that he’s already reached. So he hardly took a vow of poverty to rejoin the Blackhawks, with whom he won the Stanley Cup in 2010. But that massive payday gave him the flexibility to give the Hawks a significant hometown discount — and, yes Campbell does consider Chicago his permanent hometown these days — over the summer.

The perpetually cap-strapped Hawks never could match the kind of contract the Florida Panthers were offering, so the two sides made it work. Campbell’s not the first veteran to do so. Brad Richards came to Chicago on a $2-million deal in 2014, won the Stanley Cup, and then was off to Detroit. But Campbell’s situation is different. This isn’t some last-gasp Cup-chasing quest. Campbell is 37, but is in excellent shape, is still playing well, and likely has a few more years left in him.

So the question is, what happens next? Campbell’s deal is for one year only. And with a stagnant salary cap and Artemi Panarin’s contract extension (and potential bonuses) looming larger with every one-timer he takes, the Hawks figure to be even shorter on cap space than ever next season. Can the two sides somehow make it work again?

Well, Campbell said he’s only focusing on the present. But he wasn’t exactly coy about his future, either: He wants to play for the Hawks next season, too. And maybe beyond.

“I want to play,” he told the Sun-Times. “I don’t see myself stopping. And I don’t want to go anywhere, that’s for sure.”

The Hawks would love to keep him around, too, if they can somehow make the money work. Campbell has been everything the Hawks hoped he would be — a legitimate top-four defenseman who has helped turn their biggest weakness into one of their biggest strengths.

Campbell spent much of the season on the top pairing with Duncan Keith, and now is back on his preferred left side on the second pairing with Brent Seabrook. He’s gobbling up 19 minutes a night, hasn’t missed a game, is a positive possession player, has chipped in three goals and seven assists, has stabilized the second power-play unit, and has fit right in to a dressing room he never wanted to leave in the first place.

“It was a great fit for us,” Hawks coach Joel Quenneville said. “The price tag had to be accommodating, [so] we were fortunate that he chose to come back with us. We have a lot of versatility with him being in our defense group. We know how important that is. We felt we were a little light in that area last year. [He] added that experience, and is everything you look for in a defenseman.”

Seabrook called it “a testament to the organization we’ve got here” that Campbell so badly wanted to come back. And that’s certainly part of it, as Campbell watched with “frustration” as the Panthers retooled a division-winning team, and jettisoned many players and staffers he respected in an effort to remake the team.

But more than anything, it was Chicago itself that drew Campbell back. He never sold his home. He returned every summer. Even with his wife and two young daughters with him in South Florida, it always felt more like an extended business trip than home.

Now he’s truly home. In Chicago, on the ice, in the room. And for Campbell, that’s priceless.

“I’m smiling now, I’m happy,” he said. “I don’t look back. I know I made the right decision.”

Email: mlazerus@suntimes.com

Twitter:@marklazerus