CHICAGO — A year ago, maybe Kevin Korchinski would have been caught flat-footed. Maybe he would have gotten ahead of himself and tried to break out too quickly, abandoning his post a second or two too early. Maybe he would have just lost track of Ville Koivunen entirely.
A year ago, Pittsburgh gets a prime scoring chance off this Chicago Blackhawks turnover.
But not on Sunday night at the United Center. On this night, Korchinski was playing smart and safe. He knew exactly where the puck was. He knew exactly where Koivunen was. And he knew exactly what was about to happen. Korchinski changed directions even before the puck did, and with a combination of quick thinking, quick feet and a quick stick, he darted back into his own end to shut down what could have been a full-blown breakaway. It wasn’t the stuff of highlight reels, but it was the stuff of solid defense.
It was, to borrow Korchinski’s own terminology, a mature play.
“I just want to use my stick, use my skating, and be quick,” Korchinski said after the Blackhawks’ 3-1 victory over the sleepwalking Pittsburgh Penguins. “There’s a lot of big guys out there, so I need to maybe out-think them and get to the spots I want to get to before them, so they lose their time and space.”
The Blackhawks’ blue line is getting awfully crowded with young and exciting talent. Alex Vlasic is 23 and signed long-term. Wyatt Kaiser is 22 and looks like a keeper. Louis Crevier is 23 and Ethan Del Mastro is 22, both of them trying to carve out their own roles. Artyom Levshunov is 19, a freakish talent who has been fast-tracked to the NHL the way Korchinski was. And Sam Rinzel is just 20, having just arrived from Minnesota and playing with poise and savvy well beyond his years.
Korchinski has almost been lost in the shuffle. The No. 7 pick in the 2022 draft — the man the Blackhawks essentially traded Alex DeBrincat for — was instantly labeled the No. 1 defenseman of the future. Yet all those players have leapfrogged Korchinski while he was stuck in Rockford for most of the year.
But Korchinski is just four days older than Rinzel. He’s years younger than Vlasic, than Kaiser, than Crevier and Del Mastro and Nolan Allan. He’s just 20. By defenseman standards, he’s still a baby. He even still calls himself and other players of his vintage “kids.” Sunday night was his 89th NHL game, yet he’s still the fifth-youngest defenseman to play in the NHL this season.
It’s just not his time. Not yet.
“We forget how young he is,” Blackhawks interim coach Anders Sörensen said. “His development curve this year overall has been a positive one and it’s going up.”
Kevin Korchinski has played just 13 NHL games this season after suiting up for 76 as a 19-year-old. (Sergei Belski / Imagn Images)
Korchinski spent the full season in Chicago last year because he was too good for the Western Hockey League and too young for the American Hockey League. The NHL was the only place that made sense for him, and as the league’s youngest blueliner, he acquitted himself well enough. He certainly wasn’t embarrassed, even if he was occasionally overwhelmed. But the fast-tracking warped both the fans’ and his own sense of where he was from a developmental perspective. He still made bone-headed mistakes from time to time — “immature” plays, as he puts it. He still wasn’t big enough or strong enough on the puck. And he still needed to learn the nuances of the position.
“Last year, I was a 19-year-old kid playing in the NHL, so I can’t complain about anything,” Korchinski said. “I was fortunate. There are a lot of kids that would want to be in my shoes. But obviously, it’s a tough league. It’s tough playing 82 games in one season and making a lot of mistakes. It weighs on you mentally and really drains you. But I also got to learn a lot. I’m fortunate.”
The NHL simply isn’t a developmental league. So once he hit 20 years old and was old enough for the AHL, he was Rockford-bound, especially after struggling in training camp. He skipped the line for a year, but now he had to go back and wait his turn. And he held no bitterness toward his teammates as they each got the call ahead of him. If anything, it only made Korchinski more excited for what’s to come.
“Those are friends and people I’ll be able to talk to and be friends with the rest of my life, so I’m happy for them,” Korchinski said. “It’s really cool to see all of our D-corps, all the young guys develop. It’s night and day since two or three years ago, from the dev camps to what we’ve become as a whole. The future’s really exciting — the power we can have on this organization, the ability to really influence it in a positive way. It’s really cool being able to all come up at the same time.”
All that said, Korchinski hopes this is his last year spent primarily in Rockford. He hopes and plans to make the Blackhawks out of camp in the fall and join his buddies in the bigs. He knows that means putting on some weight and adding some strength. But he also knows it means playing a more professional game. That doesn’t mean perfection — it means weeding out the “immature” plays that so frustrated then-coach Luke Richardson last season and doomed him in training camp last fall.
“If I’m going to make a mistake, I want it to be an effort mistake,” Korchinski said. “I don’t want it to be a brain fart. I want to be present in the moment. Say it’s a bad pinch — if it’s a pinch where we’re down a goal and need a goal and it’s a 50-50 puck and I just don’t get there in time, I can live with that. But if I’m just pinching and we’re up a goal with five minutes left and there’s no real play to be had and it leads to a two-on-one (the other way), that’s just an immature play. It all depends on the time of the game, the circumstance, the score and just who you’re up against. If you’re up against a (Sidney) Crosby or (Evgeni) Malkin like tonight, you can’t give them any chances that aren’t earned.”
Sunday night was another mixed bag for Korchinski, as the Blackhawks were out-attempted 20-13 and out-chanced 12-5 with him on the ice at five-on-five. But Pittsburgh didn’t score in those minutes, either. Sörensen liked what he saw for the most part. And while we’ve yet to see the offensive dynamo Korchinski was billed as during his draft year, he knows he has more to give. And he knows he has time to give it.
Maturity isn’t just about physical strength or about making smart plays. It’s also about handling the highs and lows of a shift, of a game, of a season, of a career.
“I’m blessed and fortunate to be able to play hockey for a living,” he said. “Wherever I’m playing, I’m just trying to develop and get better, play good hockey and help the team win. Obviously, I’m on the younger side. At the same time, I can’t use that as an excuse anymore to play bad, or play an immature game out there. It’s pro hockey, it’s about results. No matter what age you are, you’ve got to show up to the rink and perform. I’m here to put my best foot forward for next year, gain confidence, showcase my skill and then have a really good summer and hit the ground running next year. I’m excited.”
(Top photo of Kevin Korchinski and Rutger McGroarty: Talia Sprague / Imagn Images)