The Blackhawks kept busy with free-agent negotiations on Monday morning, and it’s a name with ties to Chicago’s glory days.
The team confirmed Monday afternoon:
Initial report was made by TSN’s Bob McKenzie Monday morning:
It’s a reported one-year deal with no available reporting yet on the salary cap hit, although that’s not going to be anything significant enough to be a concern for Chicago’s current salary cap situation.
Martinez will turn 37 later in July and has appeared in 818 regular-season games across 15 seasons. Most of those games were with the Los Angeles Kings, which drafted Martinez in the fourth round (95th overall) in the 2007 NHL Draft. He played 597 regular-season games there before playing the last 221 with the Vegas Golden Knights, including 55 last season with 17 points (4 G, 13 A) while averaging 19:03 of ice time. He’s also appeared in 131 postseason games, including six with Vegas last season, going without a point and an average ice time of 16:50.
Martinez scored the goal every kid dreams of, clinching the 2014 Stanley Cup winner while with the Los Angeles Kings:
He also (heavy sigh) scored the OT winner in the round before, bouncing a shot in off of Nick Leddy’s ass to defeat the Blackhawks in the 2014 Western Conference Final, which remains among the best — and, arguably, still the best — display of high-quality hockey in a playoff series this century.
With Chicago allowing several veteran blue-liners to walk after last season — Nikita Zaitsev and Jarred Tinordi among them — it’s not a surprise that the Blackhawks added another experienced defenseman to bolster their D corps. But expecting anything more than solid third-pairing minutes out of Martinez at this point in his career would be unrealistic aspirations.
But, as Ben Pope of the Sun-Times pointed out, Martinez’s presence in the Chicago lineup could directly benefit one of the team’s top young prospects: