Chicago Blackhawks: Connor Murphy is ready to have a strong season

The Chicago Blackhawks are a team looking for much-improved defense in 2019-20, and this guy could be a major factor into that happening.

The idea when the Chicago Blackhawks traded Niklas Hjalmarsson to the Arizona Coyotes for Connor Murphy was that they were getting younger and cheaper for similar production as Hjalmarsson. That hasn’t necessarily been the case as Murphy has been injured and less efficient than Hjalmarsson was for a long time. That, however, doesn’t mean that he can’t move forward and be a really solid defenseman for this team.

He had a much better season in 2018-19 but he was limited to only 52 games. He is not very gifted offensively and it shows sometimes. He only had five goals and eight assists for 13 points in those 52 games. He isn’t going to be a game-breaker offensively, but he is going to be a good player in his own end. His 19:29 of ice time was a bit higher than his 18:24 career average. His Corsi-For was 48.2% last season, when it is over 50% that means a players team has the puck more often than not when they are on the ice.

He can get his numbers even better in 2019-20. As mentioned before, his offense isn’t going to make or break anything. However, he can be better defensively and that is what the Hawks need. They have guys like Duncan Keith and Erik Gustafsson to provide offense, so the defensive side of the puck is what is important.

The additions of Calvin de Haan and Olli Maatta are probably going to help the unit out as a whole. They also need to be much better on the penalty kill. They were 31st out of 31 last year and that needs to improve for them to even sniff the playoffs. Murphy can have a lot to do with that, especially if he doesn’t miss 30 games. This could be the season where he shows the skills that the Blackhawks initially traded for a few years ago. Who knows, maybe Murphy will even find a bit more of an offensive touch as well and can contribute in that way as well.