As arguably the best offensive defenseman in the WHL last season, Kevin Korchinski often tried to do everything himself because he could do everything himself.
In Korchinski’s first couple months as an NHL rookie this season, Blackhawks coaches have worked on getting him to shed that habit.
“He has a mentality where, if a guy comes down on the rush, he wants to contest the rush, get him to dump it, go back, get the puck and start the breakout,” assistant coach Kevin Dean said earlier this month. “I’m like, ‘Kevin, you only have to do one thing. If you contest the rush and [the guy] dumps it, [your ‘D’ partner] is going to go back and break it out.’”
That’s just one of many, many things the 19-year-old Saskatchewan native has had to learn on the fly this autumn. But the Hawks firmly believe he’s best off learning those things in Chicago against NHL competition, not against junior competition.
If his 19:32 of average ice time through his first 18 games (entering Sunday) — and general manager Kyle Davidson’s comment Saturday that his “inclination” is Korchinski won’t play in the world junior championships — hasn’t made that clear enough, Dean happily will: Korchinski isn’t going anywhere.
“There’s going to be growing pains for sure, but I don’t think he’s going to garner much improvement [elsewhere],” Dean said. “He dominated [the WHL] last year, so [if he went back there], he would come with the same habits and, a year from now, we’d be dealing with the same stuff.
“I would rather get on it now. Hopefully by Christmas, New Year’s, springtime, he’s really starting to make progress with some of these things and his game will reflect it. Then next year, he’ll come out of the gate ahead of all [his peers] and really ready to grow his offensive game, which is where we’re going to need him as an organization.”
So with that said, what have been Korchinski’s most prominent lessons?
The Hawks consider his biggest weaknesses right now to be his defensive stick usage, gap control and zone-entry defense, which Dean believes are all interconnected.
Korchinski has worked on subconsciously keeping his stick on the ice when guarding the defensive blue line, hoping that will discourage opponents from trying to get through him and encourage them to dump the puck instead.
“It’s something that’s easy and doesn’t take much energy; it’s just a thought-process thing,” Korchinski said. “[I’m] breaking that habit and working on using my stick to maneuver guys where I want them to go.”
On the Hawks’ season-opening trip, there were a few instances where Korchinski took a few strides toward loose pucks in the neutral zone, then second-guessed his chances of getting to it first and backed off, basically allowing free zone entries. He has tried to override that instinct.
“Usually your first read is your best read,” he said. “If you’re going to be aggressive on a guy, you’ve got to go full [steam] ahead. If you pull out last minute because you’re afraid you’re going to get beat, that’s when you usually [do] get beat. Obviously, you’ve got to make a good decision beforehand whether you’re going to go or not.”
And then there’s the case of defensive-zone breakouts, for which the margin between enough and not enough time and space can be extremely slim.
It’s crucial for defensemen to be able to accurately assess which side of that margin a given situation falls on. If there’s enough time and space, a breakout or ‘D’-to-‘D’ pass is the right move. If there’s not enough, a clearance backed off the glass or flicked overhead is the right move.
Korchinski makes the right decisions most of the time, but he hasn’t reached 100% accuracy yet.
On Nov. 12 against the Panthers, for example, he correctly determined he had enough time and space to pass to partner Connor Murphy despite two Florida forecheckers closing in, and it jumpstarted a rush on which the Hawks scored.
On Nov. 19 against the Sabres, conversely, he hesitated to weigh his options — upon receiving the puck after a long ‘D’-zone shift — instead of immediately banking the puck out. He got stripped and then committed a penalty.
“An airmail to center ice is an OK play when you have nothing, especially for a young defenseman,” Richardson said the next day. “The more reps they get, the less it’ll happen.”
Realistically, though, the Hawks expected this inconsistency. It’s part of what they signed up for when deciding to make Korchinski a permanent NHL defenseman at this stage of his career.
And they’ve been extremely impressed by his ability to identify mistakes, take feedback and promptly make the necessary improvements.
“What’s really crazy about Kevin is you tell him something once and then, literally the next shift, he’ll go out and you can tell he’s working on it,” Dean said. “He’ll get ahead of some of these things we’re talking about — habits that a lot of 19-year-olds have — [by doing that].”
