Chicago Blackhawks forward Dylan Strome is the victim of a classic chicken-and-egg debate.
Strome blazed through March with 10 goals and 10 assists in 14 games. A Jan. 21 home game against the Minnesota Wild kicked off a stretch of 16 goals and 16 assists in 30 games.
But shouldn’t a center playing on a top line — particularly one with Patrick Kane and Alex DeBrincat — be expected to put up those kinds of numbers?
That’s the cold water thrown on Strome’s case to not only keep his spot on the top line, but also stay in the Hawks’ long-term picture.
“People are going to have their own opinions,” he said before Sunday’s 3-2 overtime loss at home against the Arizona Coyotes. “Pretty much since this line had been a thing since early January, it’s been pretty good. That’s the sample size I’ve got to work with. Kind of let the numbers speak for themselves.”
Strome pointed to the chances-for versus chances-against numbers.
The Kane-DeBrincat combination’s five-on-five scoring-chance percentage is 51% with Strome versus 45% without him, according to NaturalStatTrick.com. Its expected-goal percentage is 53% with Strome and 42% without him.
“That’s obviously a good thing, and then I’ve been scoring some goals,” Strome said. “It’s nice to help contribute and my plus-minus has gone up (plus-5 since March 1) since I’ve been on this line as well, so that helps.”
Strome was similarly productive when the top line consisted of himself, Kane and Brandon Hagel, who was traded to the Tampa Bay Lightning on March 18.
Whether Hagel or DeBrincat has manned the left wing, Strome has consistently seen double-digit minutes on the top line since that Jan. 21 game against the Wild, in which Hagel and Kane assisted on Strome’s third-period goal in a 5-1 loss.
“It definitely takes away the stress of knowing where you’re going to be in the lineup, for sure,” said Strome, who was scratched often under former coach Jeremy Colliton and in the early days of Derek King’s tenure. “It’s obviously frustrating if you’re not playing a lot and maybe make a couple mistakes and then potentially not be in the lineup the next game.”
King said the key to the turnaround in Strome’s usage has been consistency on both ends of the ice.
“He works without the puck now. It’s not always perfect, but he is working,” King said. “(After) turnovers, you’ve got a backcheck and he’s the guy that’s back. He’s got his stick in the lane and it gets deflected out of the way and breaks up a play.
“These are the things he wasn’t doing. ... Even when I got here, I put him in a couple games, sat him one, kept talking to him about playing on both sides of the puck. He’s doing so much better with that and it’s helped him. It’s helped his offense. It’s funny how that works.
“The three of them just seem to click, so there’s no point in changing it. It just depends.”
Strome served his cause Sunday, scoring his 20th goal on a wrister 1 minute, 15 seconds into the game — which also served as a tribute to Jonathan Toews’ 1,000-game milestone.
The good vibes turned sour in the second period as Michael Carcone and Travis Boyd put the Coyotes up 2-1. But 5½ minutes into the third, Kane snapped a power-play goal to force overtime.
Strome took a shift in the extra period, but the Coyotes’ Shayne Gostisbehere scored the game-winner with 14.7 seconds left.
Circumstances might force King’s hand, though — and not in Strome’s favor.
The rebuilding Hawks aren’t going to the playoffs, and King said he probably will shake up the lineup to test players in different spots as a prelude to next season.
“If a (Lukas) Reichel comes up, where do I put him?” King said. “The right thing would (be) to probably put him (on Kane’s line). That’s what they might want to see, so I’d have to find a line for Stromer.
“That’ll be a hard decision to make because Stromer’s finishing off pretty good here.”
So that small sample size Strome mentioned might be all he has to work with heading into the summer as an arbitration-eligible restricted free agent.
General manager Kyle Davidson was asked during last week’s two-game Florida trip whether Strome has proven himself.
“Oh, he’s proven that he can definitely play with some good players, for sure,” Davidson said. “Very similar conversation to Dominik (Kubalík) where he’s got the arbitration: How does that play moving forward? What does that look like for us?
“We’ll get with the player rep and do some offseason debriefing, too, on how we want to construct things moving forward.”
Strome has a $3 million salary-cap hit this season. It’s not just a question of whether he fits into Davidson’s roster makeover but what impact his likely larger cap number in 2022-23 would have on the rebuild.
“It’s more the short term and establishing what their value is in the near term,” Davidson said of Strome and Kubalík. “And so we have to dig into that. We haven’t dug into those numbers. Those arbitration cases are usually later on in the offseason, August, so it’s a little down the road.”
Davidson said those decisions will be based in part on precedents: “It’s kind of a hard target to hit right now on what they’ll land at.”
Strome, who weathered two years of trade rumors, acknowledged a lot about his future with the team is out of his control.
“No one knows what’s going to happen next season or throughout the summer,” he said. “So you’ve just got to go with these last 13 games, play hard and play strong and do what you can to prove to them that you want to be a part of it.”
Strome said he hasn’t really discussed his future with his agent, Pat Morris.
“He said just focus on these last games and that’s his job,” Strome said. “So he’ll take care of that when the time’s right.”
