Blackhawks Officially Sign Former Penguins Defenseman

Grzelcyk played all 82 games with the Penguins last season and tallied one goal and 39 assists on the season. He also was a big help on the Penguins second power-play unit and was the quarterback at the point.

He can definitely help the Blackhawks on their blue line and really help their powerplay units. Grzelcyk spent the majority of his career (eight seasons) with the Boston Bruins before spending last season with the Penguins. And now he comes over to another rebuilding team in the Blackhawks that need all the help that they can get.

He is going to join a defensive core that includes a bunch of youngsters like Wyatt Kaiser, Artyom Levshunov, Alex Vlasic, and Sam Rinzel among others. The Blackhawks do not really have a lot of veteran defensemen on their team outside of Grzelcyk.

The Blackhawks used to ice a veteran defenseman in Seth Jones before trading him to the Florida Panthers at the NHL Trade Deadline. Now Grzelcyk becomes the veteran on the blueline for the Blackhawks.

Grzelcyk can be somebody that can really handle top pairing minutes for the Blackhawks. He might not immediately get that as there are a lot of young blueliners on the Blackhawks that deserve ice-time. But having Grzelcyk now should really help the youngsters on the backend and their development.

Grzelcyk may be 31 years old, but he definitely knows how to handle a lot of minutes. Bringing someone like him over to the team should really do a lot for the rebuilding Blackhawks. It remains to be seen what kind of role he will have, but it should be a significant one.