{"id":533848,"date":"2026-04-01T01:25:46","date_gmt":"2026-04-01T01:25:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/533848\/"},"modified":"2026-04-01T01:25:46","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T01:25:46","slug":"blackhawks-matt-grzelcyk-artyom-levshunov-done-for-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/533848\/","title":{"rendered":"Blackhawks\u2019 Matt Grzelcyk, Artyom Levshunov Done For Season"},"content":{"rendered":"

Blackhawks defenders\u00a0Matt Grzelcyk\u00a0and Artyom Levshunov will not play again this season due to their respective upper-body injury and hand fracture, head coach Jeff Blashill told reporters Tuesday (including Ben Pope of the Chicago Sun-Times<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Grzelcyk, 32, hasn\u2019t played since March 22 against the Flames and has already missed the Hawks\u2019 last four games. He left quite early in that contest<\/a>, potentially the last of his Blackhawks tenure.<\/p>\n

Despite coming off a career-high 40 points with the Penguins last season, Grzelcyk didn\u2019t land a guaranteed deal for this year until agreeing to a $1MM pact with Chicago on Oct. 5. Coming to the Blackhawks off a professional tryout, he ends his 2025-26 campaign with just 12 assists and a -9 rating in 69 games. His ice time average was way down at 16:58 per game, his lowest since his rookie year with the Bruins back in 2017-18.<\/p>\n

Those numbers don\u2019t tell the whole story, though. No Blackhawks defenseman has been stronger in the puck possession department this season than Grzelcyk. His 46.9% Corsi share and 45.7% expected goals share don\u2019t look intriguing at face value, but sit first and second on the team at 5-on-5, respectively, per Natural Stat Trick, and the only defender with a better xGF% is Connor Murphy, who was shipped to the Oilers before the trade deadline. Grzelcyk did start 54.6% of his shifts in the offensive zone \u2013 definitely some advantageous deployment.<\/p>\n

With even more young Hawks defenders pushing for full-time roles next season, namely\u00a0Ethan Del Mastro\u00a0and\u00a0Kevin Korchinski, it\u2019s hard to see a reunion happening. Grzelcyk is likely ticketed for his third trip through unrestricted free agency in as many years.<\/p>\n

Levshunov, though, will almost definitely be back in a Blackhawks uniform next season, barring a blockbuster deal. The 2024 second overall pick is coming off his first full season of NHL hockey. The results weren\u2019t spectacular. His growing pains were quite reminiscent of Korchinki\u2019s rushed rookie season back in 2023-24, although he did look far more comfortable offensively than his older counterpart.<\/p>\n

After sustaining the hand fracture last Friday against the Rangers, Levshunov\u2019s year ends with 22 assists and 24 points in 68 games with a -41 rating that could end up as a league-worst. Averaging 19:35 of ice time per game, that rating came despite Levshunov being their most sheltered defenseman at 5-on-5 with a 65.5% offensive zone start rate.<\/p>\n

Some of that can be attributed to goaltending. No Blackhawks defenseman received less support behind him this year than Levshunov, who ends up with a .895 on-ice save percentage at 5-on-5 with a .976 PDO. Still, his possession numbers were downright ugly considering the sheltering he received, and he\u2019ll end his season with only 11 power-play points despite anchoring the top unit.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s certainly some more growth needed before he\u2019s ready to sniff top-four minutes again, at least if Chicago has designs on contending for a playoff spot next season. Whether they\u2019ll be aggressive in trying to acquire some higher-quality veteran stopgaps than they have in years past or just let their kids ride out their growing pains remains to be seen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Blackhawks defenders\u00a0Matt Grzelcyk\u00a0and Artyom Levshunov will not play again this season due to their respective upper-body injury and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":533849,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5115],"tags":[521,37,96,5263,5,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-533848","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago-blackhawks","8":"tag-blackhawks","9":"tag-chicago","10":"tag-chicago-blackhawks","11":"tag-chicagoblackhawks","12":"tag-hockey","13":"tag-nhl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116326851147727147","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=533848"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533848\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/533849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=533848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=533848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=533848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}