- Moving to another Original Six organization, any chance for the Chicago Blackhawks to gauge forward Joey Anderson’s potential for a depth role has passed. Earlier today, Charlie Roumeliotis of WGN Radio reported that Anderson underwent a procedure for a chronic issue, which will cost him the rest of the preseason. Despite playing in 18 games for the Blackhawks last year, Anderson had long odds of making Chicago’s opening night roster, spending much of last season as an assistant captain with the AHL’s Rockford IceHogs.
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Blackhawks Rumors
Training Camp Cuts: 9/24/25
The 2025-26 NHL preseason is in full swing. As teams evaluate their younger talents and bubble players, they will continue to make roster cuts to reach the 23-man limit for opening night. As always, you can stay up to date with each team’s roster here. Today’s cuts are as follows:
Chicago Blackhawks (per team announcement)
F Nathan Behm (to WHL Kamloops)
F Parker Holmes (to OHL Brantford)
F Jack Pridham (to OHL Kitchener)
F Marek Vanacker (to OHL Brantford)
Columbus Blue Jackets (per team announcement)
D Charlie Elick (to WHL Tri-City)
New York Islanders (per team announcement)
D Kashawn Aitcheson (to OHL Barrie)
Philadelphia Flyers (per team announcement)
F Matthew Gard (to WHL Red Deer)
D Andre Mondoux (released from ATO to OHL Kingston)
D Luke Vlooswyk (to WHL Red Deer)
Tampa Bay Lightning (per team announcement)
D Everett Baldwin (to QMJHL Saint John)
F Ethan Czata (to OHL Niagara)
F Aiden Foster (to WHL Prince George)
D Jan Golicic (to QMJHL Gatineau)
G Caleb Heil (to USHL Madison)
D Maddox Labre (released from ATO to QMJHL Victoriaville)
F Marco Mignosa (to OHL Sault Ste. Marie)
F Sam O’Reilly (to OHL London)
F Kaden Pitre (to OHL Flint)
D Grant Spada (to OHL Guelph)
Utah Mammoth (per team announcement)
F Coster Dunn (released from ATO to WHL Seattle)
F Carson Harmer (released from ATO to OHL Saginaw)
D Ludvig Lafton (to USHL Dubuque)
D Tomas Lavoie (to QMJHL Cape Breton)
D Max Psenicka (to WHL Portland)
D Veeti Vaisanen (to WHL Medicine Hat)
Blackhawks Prospect Jiri Felcman Re-Signs In Switzerland
- Chicago Blackhawks 2023 third-rounder Jiri Felcman has signed a one-year contract extension with his current club, the Swiss National League’s SCL Tigers. The 20-year-old broke into Switzerland’s top league as a 19-year-old last season, ultimately scoring 10 points across 43 combined regular season and playoff games. He has yet to sign his entry-level deal in Chicago, and the Blackhawks hold the exclusive rights to sign Felcman until June 1st, 2027, per PuckPedia. This extension shouldn’t impact the Blackhawks’ signing decision but instead serves as a nice show of faith in a player recently ranked by EliteProspects as the Blackhawks’ No. 26 prospect.
André Burakovsky Returns, Blackhawks Resting Three Others
The Chicago Blackhawks have one more day of practice before their first preseason contest tomorrow night, and the jury is still out on who exactly will be available. In a series of injury updates from Scott Powers of The Athletic, the Blackhawks will have André Burakovsky back at practice this morning. However, defenseman Connor Murphy and forwards Brett Seney and Landon Slaggert will not participate.
Latestr Blackhawks Injury Updates
- The Athletic’s Scott Powers relayed the following injury updates from Chicago Blackhawks training camp – André Burakovsky was held out of practice due to a lower-body ailment, while Landon Slaggert and Brett Seney exited practice for undisclosed reasons. No further detail on the latter two players was provided, but head coach Jeff Blashill did indicate he “hoped to have more info on them tomorrow.” 23-year-old Slaggert in particular has a big opportunity ahead of him this training camp, as if he can manage to earn a spot next to Jason Dickinson on the team’s third line, he could find himself with the chance to play tough minutes against top competition in a shutdown capacity.
Latest On Jason Dickinson Lineup Plans
- The Chicago Blackhawks’ lineup plans for next season are beginning to take shape, and in particular it appears new head coach Jeff Blashill has firm plans for how he wants to deploy center Jason Dickinson in 2025-26. The Athletic’s Scott Powers reports that Blashill “thinks he can best utilize Dickinson as a third-line shutdown center,” adding that he plans on matching Dickinson’s line against opposing top lines. At the moment, Dickinson is centering veteran Ilya Mikheyev and 23-year-old Landon Slaggert, and if Blashill’s plans end up successful, the trio could be extremely helpful in taking some pressure off of top center and franchise face Connor Bedard. Dickinson enters 2025-26 as a pending UFA set to make $4.25MM against the cap.
Snapshots: Ullmark, Buium, Sturm, Grzelcyk
Ottawa Senators goaltender Linus Ullmark is ready to enter the year with a high bar. He was heavily critical of his performances through the first two days of training camp, describing them as “terrible” to Bruce Garrioch of the Ottawa Citizen. Head coach Travis Green wasn’t as harsh, telling Garioch that he thought Ullmark was fine through both days, and only being hard on himself.
While harsh words could be a sign of poor confidence, the Senators have to be encouraged by signs of a high bar from their star netminder. Ullmark posted a career-low .910 save percentage through 44 games last season, his first in Ottawa. That mark still ranked as the seventh-highest in the NHL, but was well below Ullmark’s career-long .917 save percentage. The Senators pay Ullmark a lofty $8.25MM cap hit, beginning this season. That will make finding a path back to elite performance a must for the 32-year-old netminder, and former Vezina Trophy winner.
Other notes from around the NHL:
- Top Minnesota Wild prospect Zeev Buium sustained an upper-body injury during the team’s Thursday practice, and missed Friday’s practice as a result, per Sarah McLellan of Star Tribune Sports. Nico Sturm was also absent for a designated maintenance day. McLellan adds that head coach John Hynes wasn’t concerned about Buium’s injury. That’s good news for Buium, who is looking to make the NHL roster in his first NHL training camp. He was a prolific collegiate defensemen – netting 24 goals, 98 points, one conference championship, and one national championship in 83 games and two seasons with the University of Denver. Buium was a main cog in the Pioneeers’ offense, and will now look to use that instinct to impress Minnesota’s coaching staff. Per this update, he’ll get back to doing just that within the next few days.
- Chicago Blackhawks head coach Jeff Blashill shed some more light on the team’s plans for Matt Grzelcyk’s professional try-out. He told Ben Pope of the Chicago Sun Times that Grzelcyk will likely only get a contract if one of the team’s young defensemen doesn’t look NHL-ready out of camp. Chicago will roll out the carpet for Artyom Levshunov, Sam Rinzel, and Kevin Korchinski at training camp. All three are high-upside defenders, each boasting their own reasons for excitement next season. But Rinzel hasn’t yet played through an extended run in the NHL, and Korchinski has proven shaky in past opportunities. It’s still hard to bet against either player, but Chicago made sure to hedge their bets with an NHL veteran coming off a 40-point season. Grzelcyk has played through nine NHL seasons and 527 games – and should be stout depth should the Hawks need to let one of their youngsters simmer a little while longer.
No Extension Talks Between Blackhawks, Connor Bedard
Although he hasn’t been mentioned in much of the extension buzz that dominated a quiet summer, Connor Bedard of the Chicago Blackhawks is entering the final year of his entry-level contract and became extension eligible on July 1st. Still, Bedard and the Blackhawks don’t seem rushed to get anything figured out soon.
Speaking with Charlie Roumeliotis of WGN Radio, General Manager Kyle Davidson was quoted, saying, “It’s nothing we’re actively working on right now but Connor’s mentioned it and I’ll say it: I have zero concern about where that’s headed. He wants to be here for a long time, we want him here for a long time, we’re going to make that happen.”
Unlike his extension-eligible counterparts, since he’ll only experience the expiration of his entry-level deal, Bedard will become a restricted free agent next summer without arbitration rights. It is becoming more common for players with draft pedigrees similar to Bedard’s to sign long-term extensions when the opportunity arises.
In the three drafts preceding Bedard being selected first overall, each of the three before him has signed long-term extensions with their respective clubs. Jack Hughes kicked things off with an eight-year, $64MM extension with the New Jersey Devils, followed by Owen Power signing a seven-year, $58.45MM extension with the Buffalo Sabres, and finished with Juraj Slafkovsky signing an eight-year, $60.8MM extension with the Montreal Canadiens.
Although Chicago will have ample cap space to grant Bedard a long-term contract, projecting his hypothetical extension is quite challenging. Although he erased any injury concern from his rookie campaign, Bedard hasn’t necessarily taken the league by storm, as he was expected to when drafted.
Since debuting with the Blackhawks for the 2023-24 season, Bedard has scored 45 goals and 128 points in 150 games, averaging 20:03 of ice time per game. For better or for worse, Bedard was strongly compared to Connor McDavid upon his entrance into the league. While also dealing with injury concerns during his rookie season, McDavid performed notably better in his first two years with the Edmonton Oilers, scoring 46 goals and 148 points in 127 contests.
Because of this, Bedard is unlikely to ink a similar deal to the eight-year, $100MM contract that McDavid signed upon expiration of his entry-level contract. It will likely be comparable to the recent extensions signed by Hughes, Power, and Slafkovsky, if Bedard and Chicago are leaning toward a long-term deal, with the added bump of the salary cap increase.
Blackhawks’ Laurent Brossoit Underwent Hip Surgery
Sep. 18: Brossoit’s continued absence isn’t related to his knee injury after all. The goaltender underwent yet another surgery during the offseason, this time on his hip, which will continue to leave him out long-term, according to Ben Pope of the Chicago Sun-Times.
Sep. 16: Blackhawks goaltender Laurent Brossoit will not participate in training camp as he continues to deal with a right knee injury that already cost him the entire 2024-25 season, the team said when announcing their training camp roster today. Ben Pope of the Chicago Sun-Times relays that Brossoit’s absence will be “likely a lot longer than [camp].”
A second missed season would result in Brossoit never playing a game for the Hawks after landing a two-year, $6.6MM commitment from them in free agency last summer. He was initially brought in to challenge veteran Petr Mrázek for the starters’ crease or, at the very least, provide veteran insurance in case the younger Arvid Söderblom continued to falter after an underwhelming showing in 2023-24. While a career backup option, Brossoit was coming off an excellent showing behind Connor Hellebuyck in Winnipeg with a .927 SV% and 2.00 GAA in a career-high 22 starts and capitalized on a weak goaltending market as a UFA.
Then, the injury hit. Brossoit underwent meniscus surgery in late August 2024 and was only initially expected to miss five to seven weeks, eating into his training camp but putting him on track to be available for the beginning of the regular season. The team was still optimistic about his return timeline as the season opener came and went. The team then abruptly downgraded him from day-to-day to indefinite in November. He had a second surgery that was supposed to have him on track to make his season debut in January or February, but the team ended up shutting him down for the season at the trade deadline.
The team was noncommittal about Brossoit’s availability for camp even at the beginning of the offseason, expressing hopefulness but not going so far as to make any official declarations on his status. They kicked the can even further down the road today.
Even if he was healthy, Brossoit would be something of an afterthought in Chicago by now. Söderblom established himself as a legitimate NHL option last season, making 36 appearances and logging a respectable .898 SV% and 3.18 GAA to represent massive upgrades from his prior-year performance. The club then picked up 2019 first-rounder Spencer Knight from the Panthers before the trade deadline as the main piece of the return for defenseman Seth Jones. He enters camp as the undisputed starter and recently put pen to paper on a three-year, $17.5MM extension.
Cap space is of no concern for the Blackhawks, who are closer to the floor than the limit. They’ll have no issue leaving Brossoit’s $3.3MM cap hit on injured reserve for the balance of the 2025-26 campaign if he can’t stage a comeback.
Brossoit’s absence means that offseason free agent signing Stanislav Berezhnoy, a 22-year-old out of Russia, should be the other half of their tandem with Drew Commesso in AHL Rockford. If Brossoit was healthy and ended up heading to the minors, Berezhnoy might have been pushed to an ECHL role to get him playing time to start the year.
Chicago Blackhawks Sign Wyatt Kaiser
The Chicago Blackhawks have announced that defenseman Wyatt Kaiser has been signed to a two-year, $1.7MM AAV contract. Yesterday, we covered how the Blackhawks and Kaiser hadn’t made much progress on a new deal. The fact that he’s signed his new contract today is a testament to just how quickly things can change in the hockey world.
Kaiser, 23, will see his compensation rise sharply compared to last season, when he carried a $916K cap hit. Kaiser is a 2020 third-round pick who enjoyed his best professional season to date in 2024-25. Kaiser got into 57 NHL games last season, a large increase compared to 2023-24, when he played in 32 NHL contests. Kaiser averaged 18:07 time-on-ice per game, which ranked fifth among regular Blackhawks defensemen. That 18:07 mark includes a 1:33 per-game average in short-handed situations, which ranked fourth among the club’s blueliners.
The Blackhawks have a large number of talented young defensemen in their system as things currently stand, and despite his solid 2024-25, he’ll need to fend off challenges from those players in order to retain his roster spot. Sam Rinzel, who earned a nine-game cameo at the end of last season, is all but guaranteed a lineup spot, and 2024 second-overall pick Artyom Levshunov could pose a serious threat for a spot as well.
In addition to those two names, who are both right-shot blueliners, Kaiser will also have to compete with several talented left-shot blueliners for a lineup spot on his natural side. Nolan Allan, the club’s 2021 first-round pick, got into 43 NHL games last year and offers real defensive ability, while Kevin Korchinski is the 2022 seventh-overall pick who holds quite a bit of organizational investment.
But despite the presence of numerous quality defensive prospects to compete with for a lineup spot, the fact remains that Kaiser has more NHL experience than almost all of them. With this new contract in hand, Kaiser will now be able to focus entirely on training camp and securing his spot on Chicago’s opening-night roster.