The Blackhawks have done a great job restocking their organizational depth over the last several months, but one prospect has been forced to hang up the skates.
Defenseman Dillon Fournier announced Thursday his retirement from professional hockey at the age of 22, his agent confirmed to Scott Powers of The Athletic, citing chronic shoulder injury issues as the primary reason. He first suffered the major injury in 2014, and has underwent multiple other procedures since to help get it right before calling it quits for good.
A second-round draft pick (No. 48 overall) by the Blackhawks in 2012, Fournier never reached the NHL and spent the past three years bouncing around the team's affiliates with the ECHL's Indy Fuel and AHL's Rockford IceHogs.
He played a combined 55 games with the IceHogs and Fuel during the 2014-15 campaign, and appeared in only 13 games over the course of the last two seasons due to those injuries.
Fournier was in the final year of his entry-level contract, and was set to become a restricted free agent on July 1.