NEWSLETTER
After putting some thoughts together about a brutal night for Kevin Korchinski in the Blackhawks’ loss in LA on Tuesday night, my brain kept spinning. So here comes a whole bunch more thoughts about the Hawks’ rookie defenseman.
As you already know, I love to wrap everything in context. We can get lost in the immediate moment so easily when watching an individual game or a couple games in a few days that the overall reality can be tainted by recency bias.
Korchinski vs. Blackhawks rookies (and expectations)
Since 2000, here are the Blackhawks’ defensemen who skated more than 1,000 minutes at even strength in their rookie seasons:
That’s it. That’s the list. However, I would like to add a few layers to this for context (because that’s what I do):
TvR played three college seasons at New Hampshire and was 24 years old in his first full NHL season. He joined a team that already had established stars like Keith, Brent Seabrook and Niklas Hjalmarsson on the blue line. He was an undrafted college free agent; there were no expectations that he would become a significant contributor right away. TvR recorded three goals and 11 assists and was minus-5 on a 103-point Blackhawks team that was defending their third championship in six seasons.
Keith played 56 games at Michigan State, 37 games with Kelowna after leaving MSU and then 154 games in the AHL before making the jump to the NHL level. He was 22 during his first full NHL season, and joined a team that hadn’t been relevant — or on television in Chicago — in years. He played in front of the second-lowest average home attendance in the NHL that season (just over 13,000). There was little/no pressure on him to be a future Hall of Famer. He scored 9 goals with 12 assists and was minus-11.
The Blackhawks, who are now regularly featured on national television and have every game available in some fashion to fans thanks to Keith’s crew, traded an established star player (Alex DeBrincat) to get the pick that was used to select Korchinski seventh overall in the 2022 NHL Draft. He played one season in the WHL after being drafted and is playing this entire season as a 19-year-old on a bad team. He made the jump to the NHL at the same time as a generational prospect, Connor Bedard, which raised the expectations. He has 5 goals and 8 assists and is minus-34 on a team that is minus-96 as a group thru 69 games.
And he’s doing all of this during a rookie season — again, as a teenager — during which he lost his father.
Korchinski vs. current NHL rookies
Let’s use the same consideration set for stacking up Korchinski against his colleagues on the blue line in this year’s NHL rookie class.
In this year’s rookie class, there are only three defensemen who have skated more than 1,000 minutes at even strength (thru Tuesday night):
Now let’s get that context layer placed over the top of these three as well.
Faber appeared in 97 games at the University of Minnesota before signing with the Wild (after being traded “home” by the Kings). He also appeared in two NHL games last year. He’s playing his entire first full NHL season as a 21-year-old.
Hughes appeared in 80 games at the University of Michigan and also appeared in two NHL games for the Devils last year. He’s playing his entire first full NHL season at 20.
The other two defensemen who have been asked to skate as many even strength minutes as Korchinski thus far this year competed for multiple years in a very good Big Ten conference before making their NHL debut. And they got a taste before spending an offseason knowing what they needed to work on to stick in the league. Both the Wild and Devils came into this season with expectations that their teams would be in the playoffs; they aren’t living up to those expectations right now.
I’m not saying any of this to diminish Faber or Hughes; they’re both marvelous players and will probably be very good professionals for a long time. But they’re older, more mature on the ice and more experienced than Korchinski.
Development Development Development
If we run it back to September and early October, there were so many questions about whether Korchinski should stay in the NHL or go back for another year in the WHL. I’m going to humbly beg that you read what I wrote back on Oct. 8 about the coming season for the Blackhawks’ young defenseman:
The entire point of this season for the entire Chicago Blackhawks organization is development. Learning. Growing. And coming away with a better understanding as individual players of what it takes to compete every night in the NHL while the coaches and front office are able to assess the learning curve and plan accordingly to surround the young players with the right systems and culture to make them winners.
Korchinski has absolutely grown as a defenseman this season, but there are still plenty of areas he needs to work on moving forward. That should have been expected. He is not a finished product. And probably won’t be for another couple years.
But when we step back and consider how much he’s playing and the factors surrounding his expectations and performance, it’s much easier to have pause.
