SAN JOSE, Calif. — Back in training camp, Jason Dickinson could see the writing on the wall.
The Chicago Blackhawks center could see the free agents the team brought in — Teuvo Teräväinen, Tyler Bertuzzi, etc. — and knew his role would change.
“I was getting power-play time last year — probably not likely that I’m going to see a lot of power-play time this year,” Dickinson said in September. “Not talking to the coaches at all, just purely looking at the guys we have in this room.”
Dickinson was OK with it. He said he would rather see them on the power play, even if it cost a chance at another 20-goal season — his 22 goals in 2023-24 co-led the team with Connor Bedard.
And Dickinson knew he wouldn’t be the only player who would have to alter personal expectations.
“So guys need to, unfortunately, park their ego sometimes and say, ‘Hey, best thing for the team is this,’ and oftentimes, when the team has success, a player will end up having success in contracts, in winning games in general,” Dickinson said.
His words proved prophetic.
Dickinson isn’t on a power-play unit, but he’s making equally valuable contributions.
He leads the team in faceoffs (157), is tops among team forwards in penalty-kill minutes (2:40 per game) and is regarded as one of the Hawks’ shutdown skaters.
He’s very OK with that too.
“I embrace it. It’s so much fun to me,” Dickinson said. “I love the feeling of frustrating another player, making their night miserable, making it as difficult as possible, because it’s a challenge. And I love, I love anything that pushes me.”
There a several examples like Dickinson’s, where last season’s role — or from several season’s past — is no given this season.
The Hawks have tried Philipp Kurashev as a second-line center, separating him from Connor Bedard on the top line.
Lukas Reichel has played on the fourth line and, contrary to conventional wisdom, thrived in that role.
Seth Jones and Alex Vlasic still pair up most often, but they’ve had multiple partners already. And they’ve occasionally flipped units on the power play.
Kevin Korchinski, an everyday player as a rookie last year, is focusing on development in Rockford. And longtime depth players such as Reese Johnson and MacKenzie Entwistle aren’t on the team.
The Hawks have a lot of new pieces, and some of the old pieces feel like new pieces.
But are they the right pieces?
The miracle transformation that was expected with the influx of veteran talent hasn’t quite transpired through 10 games. For every upset of the Colorado Avalanche, there’s a deflating loss to Vancouver Canucks.
Which team is the real Hawks?
It’s key because the pieces in place now might not be in Chicago two years down the road.
If you look beyond the obvious extensions for young players, such as Bedard, only two forwards (Bertuzzi and Teräväinen) and two defensemen (Jones and Vlasic) on the roster are under contract beyond next season.
Many either signed for or have two seasons remaining on their deals: Dickinson, Nick Foligno, Ilya Mikheyev, Joey Anderson, Connor Murphy and T.J. Brodie
Several may be one-year rentals (Pat Maroon, Craig Smith, Alec Martinez) or have one season left on their deals and are no guarantee to return (Taylor Hall, Andreas Athanasiou).
How do you right a ship when you might be getting off at the next port?
Bedard has been watching and learning.
“They’ve been good, they brought in a lot of new guys,” Bedard told the Tribune on Thursday. “We jelled really quick, and just kind of seeing what they do (on a) day-to-day basis to get ready to play and feel their best, and it’s good to kind of have around.”
One mindset in particular he said has influenced him is having “patience with stuff, not letting much get to them in games. That’s good to have that almost kind of calming presence in a game when maybe we get scored on or whatever.”
The team has gotten off to a somewhat disappointing (though predictable) 3-6-1 start entering their matchup Thursday night against the San Jose Sharks, and playing close in almost every game is the kind of “moral victory” players have said they no longer can stomach.
“I feel like no one would be happy with where we’re at,” Bertuzzi said. “We’re making strides. I think the first six games we were playing pretty good hockey, and then kind of dipped a little bit in the last couple, till Colorado. Obviously, it’s still early. We’re just trying to find what we’re about.”
Added Murphy: “I think we’re on a path to that. The short answer is, no: I don’t think right now we’re where we think we’re going to be. We’ve put like periods together where we (get) a little bit of taste of what we have as a team. But I think all of us are still trying to find that chemistry, to make that a consistent thing throughout whole games, leading to more wins.”
However, coach Luke Richardson believes the wins and losses mask how much they’ve improved from last season’s second-to-last finish (23-53-6).
“It’s been a pretty good track all season,” Richardson said. “The only game I wasn’t really happy from start to finish was the Vancouver game. We’re going to have one or two of those over the course of 82 games.”
Asked how he’ll know that the veterans he acquired are moving the team forward, general manager Kyle Davidson said before the season that he’ll watch how the team adjusts to challenges during and between games.
“They’ll either say what needs to be said or make the adjustments on the ice that need to be made,” he said.
Davidson wants them to avoid the bad habits of last season and “make sure mistakes don’t happen continuously, and if there are things that need to be rectified, that they’re part of the solution.”
With a good portion of the team just here for the short term, why invest in the solution?
No veteran worth his salt — particularly ones who’ve grown accustomed to the playoffs or lifted a Stanley Cup or two — wants to be part of a laughingstock.
Ask Tyler Johnson.
When Johnson (and Jones, for that matter) were brought in, the Hawks, under then-GM Stan Bowman, were clinging to playoffs hopes — or at least that’s what Bowman sold them.
Several of the free agents who picked the Hawks this summer knew what they were getting into and have said they embrace it.
Bertuzzi said the Hawks “had a lot of good years … and just like any team, eventually at some point there needs to be a little bit of a rebuild and some time to grow.”
“The last couple years, that’s been the case,” he said. “Our job as players is to get that to grow as quickly as we possibly can in the shortest amount of years as possible. No matter who’s here — one-year, five-year deal, it doesn’t matter — you buy in and try to help this team win.”
Along those lines, perhaps the best answer came from Smith, who signed a one-year deal this summer.
Last season, playing for the Dallas Stars, “I was kind of licking my chops to play the Blackhawks,” he said during camp. “And now that I’m on the inside looking out, we’ve got something to prove, because we know teams might be looking at us like that. And I like that.
“What we’ve got to do is just stay internal, stick together, continue to move in the right direction, take care of what’s what’s going on here. We don’t have to worry about what everybody else thinks about us.”
Jones, who along with Vlasic is signed for the longest term (through 2029-30), was asked during camp what he believes is in it for the short-timers.
“Pride, at the end of the day,” he said. “Everyone wants to win. We have guys in here that we brought in one- or two-year deals that have won Stanley Cups, and they know what it’s like. So we want them to bring their knowledge, their wisdom, their experience to this team for the young guys. We want young guys to pick their brains.
“What’s in it for them is loving the game.”
If pride fails to serve as proper motivation, the aforementioned self-preservation is option B.
“If you look at our roster, there’s a lot of bodies that can play at any moment,” said Foligno, the first Hawks captain post Jonathan Toews. “So it’s that internal competition that Kyle (Davidson) talked about, that we talked about.
“And if you have that, it holds everybody accountable. If your game isn’t where it needs to be, there’s guys waiting that are ready to jump in. … It keeps everyone honest and understands that it’s a privilege to play.”
Murphy said that it was understood among everyone that with the veterans’ arrival, there would be movement throughout the lineup.
Players would have to sink or swim in new roles.
“Dickinson is an example that he was put more offensive situations last year,” Murphy said. “But what shows with him is that he can still produce even in a more of a defensive role or maybe not playing in some power-play time. If everyone can get the best out of their games with where they are in the lineup, or (with) opportunities, that’s going to help us to be a solid team that is going to be hard to beat because we have different roles well-covered.”
We’ve heard platitudes before about doing the “right things,” but they didn’t translate to the ice in recent seasons.
Some veterans have told the Tribune that in the past, they believe some depth players or greenhorns may have wanted to win like any other player, but some were happy to stick to an NHL roster or get quality minutes.
They were just trying to stay afloat. It’s human nature.
That doesn’t mean every Hawk this year has been on his A-game. It’s just that they’re not forced onto the ice because of injuries or lack of depth at a position.
As such, Richardson has displayed a shorter hook.
He scratched Reichel for the opening four-game trip. He sat Kurashev for a game to send a message that his play against the Buffalo Sabres wasn’t up to par.
“I don’t consider it my own leash,” Richardson said last month. “It’s their own leash, really. That’s how they have to look at it. They should want the best out of themselves.”
He used Hall as an example, saying he fessed up about his performance in a game.
“He took ownership and said I’m going to be better tomorrow,” Richardson said. “He doesn’t say I have to be better. He already knows that. We all know that. He said I will be better tomorrow.”
If there’s one buzzword that has been circulating in the locker room, especially after a loss, it’s “simple.”
Play simple, structured, no-frills hockey, and the opportunities to make plays will come.
“Simple” is how Dickinson knows the version of the Hawks who beat the Avs are the real Hawks.
“It wasn’t like it was a fluke night where it all of a sudden everybody’s making highlight-reel plays,” he said.
“None of the goals were anything astounding, but it was just simple, hard work that is completely within our control and completely within our skill set. So I think that’s the real-deal Blackhawks, that our game is going to come from hard work.”
Dickinson said that win fit their style, their identity.
“We’re not flying up and down the ice with odd-man rushes, breakaways, all this kind of jazz,” he said. “It’s going to come from working in the corners, using our D-men, creating offensive zone time from cycles and striking when the moments are there, not playing lazy, free-flowing hockey. That’s not going to be us.”
Bedard also seems to have adopted “simple,” which is a victory in itself.
“I think as a group we have our identity, I’m not saying I’m straying away from that,” he said last week. “But any of us, if we have a play, we’re going to make it. But the biggest thing is when there’s nothing there, that’s when we really simplify. I’m no different than anyone in that sense.”
If those kind of lessons aren’t being indoctrinated into Bedard and Wyatt Kaiser and other members of the future nucleus by these “bridge-year Blackhawks,” then this experiment will have failed.
“Yeah, you could call it a ‘bridge’ year,” Foligno said. “I look at as a great opportunity for these guys in this room to set an identity and a foundation for this team to stand on for a long time, kind of like what Toews and (Patrick) Kane and those guys did when they first got here. We’re not those type of players, but there is a starting point they had to figure out: OK, we weren’t a very good team before we got here. How are we going to do this with this group of guys?
“Then as you saw the championship team start to come in, there were different pieces moved in and out. So there may be some guys still here, hopefully for those (playoff) years, but for the most part, it’s about creating that identity and that understanding of what it’s going to take to become the champions again.”
