NEW YORK — Being selfish isn’t easy for Blackhawks forward Jason Dickinson, one of the more well-liked players around the NHL.
But last offseason, he decided to be more selfish about his shooting practice format.
“Rather than going through drills and just shooting pucks because you’ve got to shoot pucks for the goalies, I was doing drills in the summer that were working on my shooting technique, and the goalies just had to suffer,” Dickinson said Tuesday. “If it was a scoring position, then they weren’t expected to save it.”
That change in approach has paid off this year to a degree even Dickinson didn’t anticipate. The 2023-24 season isn’t halfway over, yet he has already set a new career high with 12 goals.
Having previously never scored more than nine goals in any of his five full NHL seasons, the 28-year-old Canadian is on pace for 27 this season, ranking second on the team behind only Connor Bedard.
The Hawks’ near-constant losing makes it tougher for him to enjoy this mid-career breakout, but he’s trying to do so nonetheless.
“Offense is fun and I appreciate that I’m the one providing it, but I would love to trade a couple of those goals for a couple of tight wins,” he said.
Realistically, Dickinson probably won’t reach 27 goals. His 22.6% shooting percentage is unquestionably unsustainable, and he might have already begun cooling off with just one goal in his last four games.
But that one goal — a perfectly placed one-time slapper Friday against the Stars — provides a good example of what has changed. As the pass from Cole Guttman approached, he eyed a spot above Stars goalie Scott Wedgewood’s glove and then buried the puck in that exact spot.
He’s simply a more accurate shooter now. For that reason, he probably won’t regress all the way back to his previous 8.6% career shooting percentage. He suspects his improved accuracy stems from work on manipulating stick angles with both Hawks skills coach Brian Keane and his personal skills coach.
“That’s really what it’s coming down to: the areas I’m seeing, I’m actually hitting accurately,” he said.
He’s also shooting more often and from more dangerous locations. He’s averaging 12.6 shot attempts and 8.1 scoring chances per 60 minutes at five-on-five, both career highs. He averaged 11.2 shot attempts and 6.2 scoring chances last season.
Dickinson’s defensive acumen hasn’t faltered, either. As now-injured linemate Joey Anderson put it in December, “things could get bad really quick if he wasn’t on top of everything” but he somehow “covers up a lot of mistakes.”
Coach Luke Richardson thinks Dickinson has generated some additional scoring chances thanks to his adeptness at intercepting passes or jumping on mishandled pucks in the neutral zone.
“I’m glad he’s feeling confident,” Richardson added. “He deserves any kind of success he’s had this year, because he plays the right way.”
Dickinson has certainly increased his value as a pending unrestricted free agent next summer, regardless of whether the Hawks elect to extend or shop him. He acknowledged he’s “aware of all the options” in play, but he hasn’t heard anything yet from his agent.
