Rocco Grimaldi, Joseph Blandisi Sign In KHL

Former New Jersey Devils forward Joseph Blandisi has signed a two-year contract with SKA St. Petersburg of Russia’s KHL. Blandisi will be joined in the move by fellow AHL veteran Rocco Grimaldi, whose contract details haven’t yet been revealed, per Pavel Panyshev of Russia’s Championat. This will mark the first overseas move of both player’s careers, after years of rooted roles in the minor leagues.

Grimaldi boast the slightly richer career of the two, accumulating 203 NHL games and 499 AHL games over his nine-year career. He was originally drafted with the 33rd-overall pick in the 2011 NHL Draft by the Florida Panthers. Grimaldi followed his draft selection with three seasons at the University of North Dakota. He found great success in college, despite a freshman year derailed by injury, and entered the pros with wind behind his sails in the 2014-15 season.

Grimaldi scored a hot 42 points in 64 games of his AHL rookie season. That was enough to earn the first seven games of his NHL career, though he only managed one goal in those appearances. He spent the next four years firmly rooted in the rut of hot AHL scoring and meager NHL totals, until the 2018-19 Nashville Predators opted to reward Grimaldi with his first full year in the NHL. He scored just 13 points in 53 games with the club, but shined through enough to cement a bottom-six role for the next three seasons. But after not finding another gear at the top flight, Grimaldi was relegated back to the minors in 2022. His role was defined as a top AHL scorer with limited upward mobility – a sentiment that’s kept Grimaldi from receiving any NHL games in three years, despite scoring 256 points in 252 games since 2022.

Blandisi has fallen into a similar rut over recent years. After bearing through split AHL and NHL minutes between 2015 and 2020, the former sixth-round selection landed a full-time role in the minors in the 2020-21 season. He’s since found upside as both a scorer and bruiser, a role best highlighted by his 59 points and 110 penalty minutes in 70 games with the Toronto Marlies in the 2023-24 season. He followed that performance with 35 points and 82 penalty minutes in 58 games last season, bringing his career-long totals up to 321 points and 664 penalty minutes in 448 games and 10 seasons in the AHL. He also has 31 points in 101 NHL games.

Both players will look to escape middling roles in North America with a move to Russia’s top squad. They’ll join a rich squad in SKA, headlined by returning scorers Sergei Plotnikov and Marat Khairullin. Grimaldi and Blandisi should have no trouble finding hardy middle-six minutes, following SKA’s loss of Evgeny Kuznetsov and Mikhail Grigorenko this off-season. SKA finished second in their division, and got bumped from the conference quarterfinals, last season.