By Chris Hine/Chicago Tribune


Defenseman Kimmo Timonen retired and center Antoine Vermette re-signed with his former team, the Coyotes.
But one of Blackhawks general manager Stan Bowman’s trade-deadline acquisitions is sticking around in Chicago for a little while _-and at a friendly price for the cap-crunching Hawks.
Winger Andrew Desjardins agreed to a two-year deal, the team announced, with a reported average cap hit of $800,000 per season in a move that will bolster the Hawks on their fourth line.
Desjardins said he took less money to stay in Chicago because of how much he and his family enjoyed the city and how much he enjoyed playing for the Hawks.
“We loved it there, the entire family,” Desjardins said Friday. “It came down to just that _ how much we enjoyed the city, how much we enjoyed the organization. It was a great experience. That made it an easy decision for us.”
Desjardins found a role with the Hawks almost immediately after he came over from the Sharks in a trade that sent Ben Smith to San Jose.
“I’d say seven-to-10 games into playing I started feeling more and more comfortable,” Desjardins said. “It felt like a pretty quick transition. The guys were great and I talked about how welcoming they were and the trust kind of happened pretty quick with the coaching. It was a pretty easy transition.”
Desjardins finished the season with five goals and five assists in 69 games and had one goal and three assists in the playoffs. But the Hawks weren’t asking Desjardins to be a scorer.
Instead, Desjardins was a key part of the Hawks’ fourth line, a line that coach Joel Quenneville often trusted in the Stanley Cup playoffs to start in the Hawks zone and against some of the opposition’s more potent offensive threats.
“It’s still one of those things where you never really know why it works so well,” Desjardins said. “We all understood what we had to do out there, and I think we pushed each other to do the right things. We always had each other’s backs, not even meaning in the physical sense, but just in the game.
“All those kinds of things helped with the chemistry.”
Andrew Shaw, who played the other wing on the fourth line, is under contract through 2016 while the Hawks are still working to re-sign restricted free agent Marcus Kruger, who centered the line. Desjardins said he hopes the fourth line will remain intact next season.
“We obviously ended the season on a good note,” Desjardins said. “So I feel like if it did happen hopefully we can continue that chemistry and build it from there.”