In another move to bolster their bottom forward lines, the Chicago Blackhawks announced the signing of forward Lance Bouma to a one-year deal.
Bouma, 27, had spent his entire 304-game NHL career with the Calgary Flames, the same team that drafted him in the third round of the 2008 NHL Entry Draft.
He appeared in 61 games for the Flames last season, totaling three goals and four assists. The best numbers of his career came in the 2014-15 season, when he scored 16 goals an added 18 assists during the 78 games he played. He’s also without a point in his five playoff games played.
Just before noon on Saturday, 670 The Score’s Jay Zawaski tweeted this:
Hawks aren’t done. Will likely add another 4th liner and maybe a Vet dman.
— Jay Zawaski (@JayZawaski670) July 1, 2017
Bouma appears to be the first part of that equation. His role in Calgary appeared to focus primarily on defense, with Bouma starting in the defensive zone 67.6 percent of the time, the highest mark among Flames’ centers in the 2016-17 season.
With the signing of Patrick Sharp, the recent acquisition of Laurent Dauphin, and now the signing of Bouma, the Hawks have added several more players into the mix for the bottom six forward spots on the team. The training camp battle for some of those roster spots gets more intense with each move that general manager Stan Bowman makes.
For more information on the Blackhawks free agent situation, click here.