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. 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, he's a good pro and we've got some question marks with a couple of our players and it just gives us some veteran depth that we need."

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

"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 , 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. Ruff said the big defensemen 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. 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."

Olen Zellweger is still in concussion protocol. Ruff said,

In my conversations he feels real good, he's just going through protocol, he had a great skate today, will skate again tomorrow and I would say in all likelihood, I would anticipate him being ready for next week."

Noah Ostlund, Jiri Kulich and Alex Lyon didn't practice on Friday. Lyon and Kulich didn't finish Thursday's game in Detroit. Ostlund did finish and Ruff said,

"It was a maintenance day for him he played big minutes last night."

As for Lyon he said,

"Being evaluated, so we'll have more on him tomorrow."

Kulich apparently wanted to keep going, but Ruff said,

"Just really maintenance, he could've skated today, so we decided to keep him off again. 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 one of the alternate captains also left. Ruff said he's not going to replace him 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."

Last season after the final preseason game, the team went on a retreat together and this year will be no different according to the head coach,

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

After practice the cuts were made sending players down to Rochester. Some had to be waived like Dennis Gilbert and Ryan Johnson. Some of the youngsters going down were Radim Mrtka, Maxim Strbak, Vsevolod Komarov and Jake Richard.

For Saturday's final preseason game join Brian Koziol for the pregame starting at 2:00 when you'll hear from Ruff, Thompson and Louis Crevier.

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