Sabres sign defenseman Matt Grzelcyk to one-year deal

Buffalo, N.Y. (WGR) - The Buffalo Sabres decided they needed to add some depth to their defense, so they inked Matt Grzelcyk to a one-year contract worth $850,000 on Friday.

The 31-year-old played 69 games with the Chicago Blackhawks last season, putting up no goals but recording 12 assists.

Grzelcyk was taken in the third round of the 2012 NHL Draft by the Boston Bruins, and signed with the team after four seasons played at Boston University. Then after eight years in the Bruins organization, he played one season with the Pittsburgh Penguins before joining the Blackhawks last year.

In 586 NHL games, the left-shot defenseman has scored 26 goals and put up 161 assists for 187 points. He's played in 66 playoff games - all with the Bruins - netting five goals and nine assists for 14 points.

Sabres head coach Lindy Ruff is very familiar with Grzelcyk.

"A real good competitor, a guy that's got a lot of NHL games, and knows how to play the game," said Ruff following Friday's practice. "He's a good pro, and we've got some question marks with a couple of our players. It just gives us some veteran depth that we need."

The question was asked of Ruff, why not use Radim Mrtka or Vsevolod Komarov?

"You can always use a young player, but I think where we're at, I'd rather have a young player step in and play big minutes in a Rochester role. It's better for him than coming out and play eight, 10, 12 minutes," Ruff said. "So in the role we need him, Grzelcyk will be a good fit."

Buffalo has two key injuries to their blue line, as Mattias Samuelsson is considered week-to-week with a lower-body injury, and Olen Zellweger is still in concussion protocol.

According to Ruff, Samuelsson keeps trying to give him good news.

"He looks at me and he says, 'This isn't going to be that long.' That's just the way he is," Ruff said of the big defenseman. "When you look at medical, there's a window that fits in, and some players can get in before that window. Some take the whole window, and some are on the other end of it. Sometimes it's a pain tolerance thing, and I actually think it's going to be on the shorter side. That's just me, but you never know."

As for Zellweger, Ruff says his conversations have been good with the newcomer.

"He's just going through protocol, he had a great skate today, will skate again tomorrow. I would say, in all likelihood, I would anticipate him being ready for next week," the head coach said.

Noah Östlund, Jiri Kulich and Alex Lyon all didn't practice on Friday. Lyon and Kulich didn't finish Thursday's game in Detroit, while Östlund did.

"It was a maintenance day for [Östlund]. He played big minutes last night," Ruff noted.

As for Lyon, Ruff says he's still being evaluated.

"We'll have more on him tomorrow," he said.

Meanwhile, Kulich apparently wanted to keep going during Thursday's game, but Ruff wanted to err on the side of caution.

"He could've skated today, so we decided to keep him off again," Ruff said. "In all likelihood, I would think he'd skate tomorrow, so he probably skates or plays - one of the two. But I think probably just skate."

With Alex Tuch leaving this offseason, one of the alternate captains also left the locker room. Ruff says he's not going to replace him in the leadership group, and will just leave the "A" on Tage Thompson and Samuelsson.

"I'll keep the guys that I have, initially right now, where I'm at," he said.

After the final preseason game last year, the team went on a retreat together, and this year will be no different.

"We plan on leaving right after the game tomorrow, same type of protocol," Ruff explained. "Just sort of culture building, we've got the same gentlemen coming in to do a little structured culture meeting. Some part of that is to just get together with the whole group and get ready for the year. I liked how it went last year."