NEW YORK — Maybe Connor Bedard made a bad pass, flinging a contested backhander from the corner to the far point. Maybe Kevin Korchinski was in the wrong position, having veered too far to the middle, a bit lost in the high slot. Regardless, Bedard’s pass landed right on Artemi Panarin’s stick and the perennial MVP candidate had nothing but clear ice ahead of him down the right side of the rink.
That’s when Korchinski went to work. A few lightning-quick strides allowed Korchinski to backpedal and close the gap to his left simultaneously before he turned and started skating downhill, a few steps ahead of Panarin. At the blue line, he squared Panarin up like a basketball defender, keeping him to the outside with flawless footwork. One swipe of the stick destabilized Panarin. A second dislodged the puck completely, with Korchinski then beating Panarin to the puck behind the net and knocking it harmlessly away.
It’s almost blasphemous to say, but it was downright Duncan Keith-esque. Perfectly played.
Welcome back to the bigs, kid.
“I thought he was unbelievable,” Chicago Blackhawks interim coach Anders Sorensen said. “Really happy the way he played. Really happy for him to come up in tough circumstances (having) played a lot last week. I thought he looked really good.”
This call-up for Korchinski, who has spent the season in Rockford, was supposed to be a quick one — a little reward for his hard work at both ends of the ice in the minors while Alec Martinez nursed a day-to-day injury. It might be something else now.
“He’s gonna play Thursday (on Long Island),” Sorensen conceded. “He looked great.”
Korchinski wasn’t the reason the Blackhawks beat the free-falling New York Rangers 2-1 at Madison Square Garden on Monday night, sending the reigning Presidents’ Trophy winners off the ice to a chorus of boos from a frustrated fan base. No, that was a team effort. Arvid Söderblom’s 29 saves, Taylor Hall’s goal and assist, Tyler Bertuzzi’s ferocious forecheck, Connor Bedard’s strong all-around effort and the sudden clicking of Sorensen’s aggressive forecheck and activated defense in the second period all played a role.
But Korchinski looked terrific — in his own end, in the neutral zone, in the offensive zone. With Martinez and Seth Jones both out, he even ran the second power-play unit. He finished with four shot attempts in nearly 17 minutes of ice time, paired with veteran TJ Brodie.
“Just don’t overcomplicate it,” Korchinski said of his plan before the game. “Go play your game. Treat it as a normal game, because once you start getting too fancy, that’s when you start getting yourself in trouble. Play how you normally play — but don’t shy away at the same time. Play your game and play confident.”
Kevin Korchinski and Artemi Panarin fight for control of the puck. (Brad Penner / Imagn Images)
This is what the Blackhawks envisioned when they traded Alex DeBrincat to Ottawa to secure the No. 7 pick at the 2022 draft and took Korchinski — the quick feet, the slashing style, the aggressive puck movement. But it’s not what they saw during his rookie season in Chicago.
Too good for the Western Hockey League, too young for the American Hockey League, Korchinski was essentially stuck in the NHL as a 19-year-old, and he looked like, well, like a 19-year-old defenseman in the NHL. He wasn’t exactly overwhelmed, but he was far from overpowering, either. He became so preoccupied with not messing up in the defensive zone that he all but stopped playing in the offensive zone. And it didn’t always go so great in the defensive zone, either, even with the offensive sacrifice. Korchinski finished the season a minus-35 at five-on-five, the Blackhawks swimming in opposing high-danger scoring chances when he was on the ice. (To be fair, they were swimming in opposing chances when he wasn’t on the ice, too — the 2023-24 Blackhawks were not exactly a defensive juggernaut.)
Korchinski turned 20 over the summer, making him eligible to play in Rockford. So when he was sent down during training camp, it became then-IceHogs coach Sorensen’s mandate to loosen the kid up and get the offense flowing again.
“He’s settled down defensively, he’s steadier back there, he plays his position much better now,” Sorensen said. “The biggest thing for him is we drafted him as an offensive defenseman. We want him to utilize his strengths in those areas. And we’ve seen him progress in those areas.”
Korchinski’s numbers were modest but solid in Rockford, with two goals and nine assists in 21 games, including a goal and seven assists in a 10-game span between mid-November and last week. With Martinez day-to-day with an injury and the Blackhawks in need of someone who could run the second power-play unit, Korchinski got called up for Monday’s game in the New York.
He’s almost certainly not back for good, or even for very long at all. The plan, as it has been for nearly all of the Blackhawks’ young players, is to be extra patient and let them over-ripen in Rockford. Regardless, Korchinski was happy to be back in the NHL, even if he wasn’t exactly packed for another extended road trip after three games out east with the IceHogs.
“I’m pretty low on clothes right now,” he said. “Maybe I’ll go shopping (Tuesday).”
Korchinski was something of an awkward fit in Luke Richardson’s defense-first system, but he’s shown flashes of his junior self in Sorensen’s more up-tempo style, which encourages blue-liners to activate and join the rush. Korchinski said he was able to get a little of his “flair” and “swagger” back with the IceHogs.
“It was awesome,” Korchinski said of playing for Sorensen in Rockford. “He loves the ‘D’ jumping up, trying to get aggressive. It was awesome for the two months he was the head coach in Rockford. We learned a lot and were getting on a good roll there. It’s awesome to see him up here, and I know he’s going to be a great coach. (There’s) a lot to look forward to.”
That Sorensen style was evident throughout Monday’s win. Early in the second period, Korchinski expertly trailed the play and got a great scoring chance from the slot. Wyatt Kaiser and Connor Murphy had similar chances with similar activations from the back end.
Wyatt Kaiser also managed a scoring chance from an activation against the Rangers. (Bruce Bennett / Getty Images)
“It’s huge,” said Hall, who raved about Sorensen’s systemic tweaks and confidently declared a lot more goals were in the Blackhawks’ immediate future. “You get the puck over the blue line and you pull up, it’s so nice to see a D-man jump in there. And conversely, when you’re on ‘D’ and their ‘D’ are jumping by you all night, it makes for a hard game. It’s huge. I hope that our ‘D’ feel comfortable doing that all the time.”
It’s a positive any time a defender gets a scoring chance like that, but Murphy and Kaiser aren’t exactly offensive weapons. Murphy had all the time in the world in the low slot and missed the net by a wide margin. Korchinski is an offensive player; it’s critical he finds chances like that frequently if he’s going to be the player the Blackhawks envisioned when they drafted him.
It starts with his feet. Korchinski’s skating is what made him such a tantalizing draft prospect, his quick feet and aggressive puck-handling allowing him to post 65 points in 67 games for the Seattle Thunderbirds in his draft season and 73 points in 54 games the following year. As an NHL rookie, he was on his heels too often, worried more about letting an opponent get behind him than he was about getting behind an opponent himself.
Korchinski said he’s using his feet more and taking more chances offensively — within reason, of course.
That was the whole idea of his demotion to Rockford — to let him and No. 2 overall pick Artyom Levshunov play big minutes and run wild together on the IceHogs’ top pairing, hoping that someday they’ll be able to do the same in Chicago. Both are hoping to become the Blackhawks’ No. 1 defenseman of the near future, but Korchinski laughed when asked if there was a budding rivalry between them.
“No rivalry, no,” he said. “We both want each (other) to succeed. Pushing each other, learning from each other. That’s the biggest thing. I want those guys to succeed. The better they do, the better your team is going to do. And the better your team does, the better you look.”
Well, Korchinski looked awfully good on Monday night. Did he look like a No. 1 defenseman? Nah, that’d be unfair hyperbole. But he sure looked like an NHL defenseman — whether he heads back to Rockford or not.
(Top photo of the Blackhawks celebrating Taylor Hall’s goal: Jared Silber / NHLI via Getty Images)
