The Chicago Blackhawks have spent the offseason making noise in all the obvious places. Bowen Byram is in.
Jordan Greenway is in. Connor Bedard’s shoulder surgery has changed the conversation around the start of the season, and his contract situation has only added more intrigue.
With those bigger headlines swallowing most of the attention, a few departures slipped through the cracks. Three players quietly moved on from the Blackhawks organization in free agency, and each one landed somewhere else before many fans even noticed they were gone.
Sam Lafferty is probably the name that would catch the most people off guard. The 31-year-old signed a one-year, two-way contract with the Florida Panthers, which is an unusual setup for a player with nearly 400 career NHL games.
He appeared in 29 NHL games last season and finished with just two points, a rough stretch that followed a path to Chicago that was a little unusual in itself. Lafferty came to the Hawks in a trade with the Vancouver Canucks that also included Ilya Mikheyev, and that move was only for Lafferty’s rights.
He later signed with the Buffalo Sabres before eventually ending up with the Blackhawks a year after that.
Olivier Rodrigue also found a new landing spot. Once viewed as a strong goaltending prospect after going in the second round of the 2018 NHL Draft, he signed with the Blackhawks in February to provide depth after spending the earlier part of his career with the Edmonton Oilers.
He never played a game for Chicago, though he did appear in 10 games for the Rockford Icehogs. His save percentage never got over .900 there, and this offseason the Tampa Bay Lightning brought him in on a contract for the Syracuse Crunch.
He signed on a two-way deal alongside Mads Sogaard.
Then there’s Ryan Mast, a smaller move but still one that mattered on the organizational level. The 23-year-old defenseman put up 14 assists in 46 games for the Icehogs last season, a modest line, but enough that some expected the Blackhawks to at least extend a qualifying offer. Instead, Mast left the organization and signed with the Pittsburgh Penguins’ AHL affiliate in Wilkes-Barre, PA.
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Bowen Byram Has A Blackhawks Connection Fans Never Saw Coming
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There is also a family thread here that gives this move a little extra texture for Blackhawks fans. Byrams connection to Chicago runs through his father, Shawn, who had a brief NHL career of his own, and the younger Byram has already had a few memorable moments against the Blackhawks, including scoring his first NHL goal in a win over them. Now he gets a chance to make his own mark in the same sweater his father once wore, and that kind of full-circle detail is hard to miss in a market that remembers its hockey history. [Read more 🡒]