{"id":333354,"date":"2025-12-08T23:15:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-08T23:15:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/333354\/"},"modified":"2025-12-08T23:15:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-08T23:15:08","slug":"blackhawks-reassign-sam-rinzel-landon-slaggert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/333354\/","title":{"rendered":"Blackhawks Reassign Sam Rinzel, Landon Slaggert"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Blackhawks have reassigned defenseman\u00a0Sam Rinzel<\/a>\u00a0and winger\u00a0Landon Slaggert<\/a>\u00a0to AHL Rockford, per Charlie Roumeliotis of WGN Radio 720<\/a>. Both players are still waiver-exempt.<\/p>\n

Slaggert\u2019s demotion was expected. He\u2019s been sent down once already this season and has been a healthy scratch in eight of Chicago\u2019s last 10 games. Rinzel\u2019s, however, comes as a surprise.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>A first-round pick straight out of the Minnesota high school ranks in 2022, Rinzel was viewed as one of the higher-ceiling offensive defenders in the class but would need plenty of developmental runway to improve his overall game. The 6\u20194\u2033 righty seemed to put most of the pieces together during the last two years with the University of Minnesota. He racked up a 12-48\u201360 scoring line in 79 games with a +43 rating. Not only was he a Big Ten First Team All-Star last year, but he was also named the conference\u2019s Defensive Player of the Year.<\/p>\n

Rinzel\u2019s performance down the stretch last season for the Blackhawks after his collegiate campaign ended only added more fuel to his stock. Chicago deployed him in a top-pairing role with\u00a0Alex Vlasic<\/a> for their final nine games, and the results were fantastic. Rinzel rattled off five assists and a +1 rating while averaging 23:22 of ice time per game, getting an audition on the Hawks\u2019 top power-play unit after\u00a0Seth Jones<\/a>\u00a0was traded weeks earlier. He and Vlasic also controlled 50% of expected goals at 5-on-5, the only Blackhawks defense pair to break even with over 100 minutes of ice time last year, per MoneyPuck<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This season, however, there have been significant growing pains. Rinzel started back in that top-pairing job with Vlasic and skated over 25 minutes twice in the Hawks\u2019 first three games. Since then, he\u2019s only broken the 20-minute plateau three times and not since Oct. 26. He\u2019s remained in the lineup all this time as Chicago has dressed seven defensemen for the majority of the campaign, but he was healthy scratched once on Nov. 15 against the Maple Leafs. Since returning to the lineup, he\u2019s managed five assists in 11 games \u2013 all at even strength \u2013 but is only averaging 14:36 of ice time per game.<\/p>\n

The reduced usage has come as a result of some warts popping up in Rinzel\u2019s defensive game. Rinzel\u2019s offensive zone start percentage at 5-on-5 is 55.4, ninth on the team (min. 50 minutes). Despite that, the Blackhawks are allowing more shots per 60 minutes with Rinzel on the ice (34.2) than any other player on the roster. The same goes for shot attempts (68.3), and his 33.4 scoring chances against per 60 are the worst among defensemen.<\/p>\n

He\u2019ll now get some time to clean up his game in Rockford. Given Chicago\u2019s frequent juggling of defense pairs this season, a strong run of play means he could find himself back on the roster in fairly short order \u2013 particularly if they start listening to calls on pending unrestricted free agents\u00a0Matt Grzelcyk<\/a> and\u00a0Connor Murphy<\/a>\u00a0closer to the trade deadline.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s too early to read into how Rinzel\u2019s demotion will affect head coach Jeff Blashill\u2019s propensity to ice 11 forwards and seven defenders this season. Chicago didn\u2019t fill its newly open roster spots in corresponding moves today because they\u2019re off until Wednesday, following a dreadful weekend in Southern California, losing back-to-back games against the Kings and Ducks by a combined score of 13-1. Those losses brought their record in their last 10 games down to 2-6-2, although their hot start means they\u2019re still one game above .500 and one point back of the Mammoth for the second wild card spot in the West as they approach the 30-game mark.<\/p>\n

As for Slaggert, he\u2019s been most often used as an extra forward on the NHL roster this season, a consequence of fewer jobs being available to the forward group than normal. The 23-year-old has entered the lineup on 10 occasions with one goal on five shots and an even rating. He\u2019s averaged just 9:04 of ice time per game after seeing over 12 minutes in 33 appearances last season.<\/p>\n

Image courtesy of Kamil Krzaczynski-Imagn Images.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Blackhawks have reassigned defenseman\u00a0Sam Rinzel\u00a0and winger\u00a0Landon Slaggert\u00a0to AHL Rockford, per Charlie Roumeliotis of WGN Radio 720. Both…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":333355,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,756,90094,4247,448,28105,82,4584],"class_list":["post-333354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-chicago-blackhawks","tag-landon-slaggert","tag-newsstand","tag-nhl","tag-sam-rinzel","tag-sports","tag-transactions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=333354"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333354\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/333355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=333354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=333354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=333354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}