A Look Back At Niklas Hjalmarsson

This season obviously has not gone the way the Blackhawks were hoping. The trades for Seth Jones and Marc-Andre Fleury had many fans thinking that making the playoffs was not too far fetched. However, we saw very early on that it was going to be very much be a different season than expected. Because of that, the Blackhawks have been pretty heavy on the celebration nights this season probably to make up for the under performance of the team. And one of those celebration/legacy nights was that of Niklas Hjalmarsson. Hjalmarsson was one of those players who played a small, yet so crucial role in the success that the Blackhawks had in the three Stanley Cup years.

Niklas Hjalmarsson was not your point per game type of player like some of the defenseman in the league today. He was without a doubt more of an old school type of player when it came to his style of play. If you were to look at Hammer's stats and his stats only, it just simply wouldn't do justice for just how good of a player he actually was.

Hjalmarsson was a 4th round draft pick of the Blackhawks in 2005 and spent the first ten years of his NHL career in Chicago with the Blackhawks until he was traded in 2017 for Connor Murphy and Laurent Dauphin of the Arizona Coyotes. In this 10 years, Hjalmarsson accumulated 23 goals and 123 assists for 143 career points with the Blackhawks. But like I said earlier, it was the things that don't show up in the box score that made Hammer such a great player. He was that grinder type of player to go out there and do the things that nobody wants to do. He'll block 20 shots a game if that's what it takes. He'll lay 20 hits a game if that's what it takes. All in all Niklas Hjalmarsson is often forgotten about when talking about key players in the Stanley Cup runs, and that simply shouldn't be the case when he played such a crucial role in all three of them.