BOSTON — New Blackhawks defenseman Matt Grzelcyk will have to resist an urge to mess with TD Garden’s snow scrapers Thursday.
That’s because Grzelcyk has been ingrained in the culture of the Bruins’ arena since birth. His dad, John, worked for the “bull gang” — which converts the facility back and forth between hockey, basketball, concerts and other events — for more than 50 years.
His brother, also John, continues to work for the gang part-time. Many other TD Garden staff members are family friends from the Boston neighborhood of Charlestown where Grzelcyk grew up.
During the first seven seasons of Grzelcyk’s NHL career — all with the Bruins — he arguably could’ve laid a claim to the title of Mr. Bruin over the likes of Patrice Bergeron or Zdeno Chara.
“Between TV timeouts, it was hard not to interact with [the crew],” Grzelcyk recalled Wednesday with a grin. “Sometimes we were losing and I didn’t want to be caught smiling or joking around. But maybe if we were up, like, 5-1 in the third, I’d bump into the shovel or something like that.”
His dad, who’s now 75, survived prostate cancer in 2022 and no longer does the manual labor, but he still hangs around at the arena and “thinks he’s working,” Grzelcyk quipped. He was there watching Hawks practice Wednesday.
Grzelcyk’s mom Kathleen, meanwhile, alerted him just last week to the possibility he might find himself back home this week.
Grzelcyk was so focused on parlaying his training-camp tryout into a contract — which he succeeded in doing Sunday, inking a one-year, $1 million deal — that he hadn’t looked ahead at the Hawks’ regular-season schedule until then.
“She was like, ‘Hopefully it works out. I’ll see you in a week,'” Grzelcyk said. “I was like, ‘Oh, are you coming to Chicago?’ She was like, ‘No, you’re coming to Boston!'”
First impression
In between Grzelcyk’s long Bruins tenure and his arrival with the Hawks, he spent last season with the Penguins. With them, he got his first impression of Hawks rookie defenseman Sam Rinzel during a home-and-home set in April.
“I remember walking away from those two games being like, ‘Oh, who is this guy?'” Grzelcyk said. “[I was impressed] with the way he’s able to handle the puck and skate at his size. He’s got really good poise.”
Grzelcyk ended up being paired with Rinzel on Tuesday, although he moved down to a more appropriate third-pairing role Thursday alongside Connor Murphy.
Line shuffle
The praise for Hawks coach Jeff Blashill’s willingness to stick with forward line combinations might have been premature. After just one regular-season game, he broke up the first line he used throughout training camp — Connor Bedard centering Ryan Donato and Andre Burakovsky — to put young Colton Dach in Donato’s left-wing spot.
However, it’s a well-deserved big opportunity for Dach, whom Bedard said was “super noticeable” and difference-making in every preseason game. Blashill explained the decision in a logical way, too.
“Dach has played pretty good hockey,” Blashill said. “He’s somebody I could foresee being in this role eventually. Is he ready for that now? We’ll see. Until you try, you don’t know for sure.
“I don’t think it has to be a [constant] threesome, either. You can kind of work with pairs [and then] move guys in and out. That’s a way not to have a complete blender, but still there’s times where guys need a spark.”
