Danny Wirtz has officially become the fourth chairman of the Blackhawks since the family first purchased the team in 1950.

He had been functionally leading the organization as its CEO for the past three years, and he doesn’t expect things to change much from their given course — he will maintain the CEO title, as well. But following the death of his father, Rocky Wirtz, in July, his role at the top of the pyramid has been cemented.

“I don’t know if that doubles the amount of work necessarily, but...I take that [chairman role] seriously,” Wirtz told the Sun-Times on Tuesday. “It’s a real role to represent our business at the NHL Board of Governors meeting as the governor of the club.”

“But there isn’t a change in owner. Our family has owned this team, and our family continues to own this team. It’s now my responsibility to steward on behalf of the family. That’s an important distinction in these transitions that the ownership actually hasn’t changed. Now it’s my turn to go and hopefully be as successful as my dad, my grandfather and my great-grandfather.”

Wirtz will be pulled in many directions now as chairman of the entire Wirtz Corp., which includes the family’s Breakthru Beverage liquor-distribution behemoth as well as its real estate, banking and other holdings. He’ll have improve his time-management skills even more to monitor such a wide array of responsibilities, he said.

That could give more power and responsibility to business president Jaime Faulkner and general manager Kyle Davidson, who have each had some time now to settle into their roles since Wirtz picked them to lead the two primary branches of the organization.

This summer also marked three years since Wirtz announced and outlined his vision to “reimagine the potential of hockey” and implemented sweeping changes to the Hawks. At this point, he feels the organization has now gained a “tremendous amount of momentum” along that path.

“The work has been underway, so it’s very much a continuation of that work, now with more of [Rocky’s] legacy in mind versus his influence,” he said.

This story will be updated.