Kevin Korchinski
Chicago Blackhawks Defense
Nineteen years old, 19:37 a night, and minus-39 — the price of a rebuild charged to a teenager.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023-24 | CHI | 76 | 5 | 10 | 15 | -39 | 20 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 93 | 5.4 | 19:37 |
| 2024-25 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 76 | 5 | 10 | 15 | -39 | 20 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 93 | 5.4 | 19:37 |
This Season So Far
The 2024-25 season has not started. The empty row above is his, and both it and this paragraph fill in on their own from the morning after he first plays: what he has done, what it is worth against his own last season, and the run he is on when the two disagree.
Last Season
Seventy-six games at 19, 5 goals and 10 assists, 19:37 a night and minus-39. He took 40.8 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,332 minutes, the 5th percentile, and his ice went 34-64 against an expectation of 45.97-66.78.
The goals against are almost exactly what the chances predicted, which matters: he was not unlucky, he was on the ice for a great deal of danger. Playing a nineteen-year-old defenceman nearly twenty minutes a night on the club with the worst shot share in the league is a decision about development rather than about winning, and the minus is the invoice.
The Finesse Game
He skates as well as anybody on this blue line and he carries the puck out under pressure rather than chipping it. That is the skill the seventh pick of the 2022 draft was taken for and it survived a season that punished everything else about his game.
He took 93 shots at a median of 56 feet with 82 per cent from beyond 40, and 5 went in. There is no shooting game yet and there does not need to be one. The passing is ahead of the shot — 10 assists is a thin return, but the first pass out of the zone is already a professional’s pass.
The Physical Game
He is 6-1 and 185 and cannot yet move a man off the puck below the goal line. Twenty penalty minutes in 76 games is a very low rate for a defenceman playing these minutes, and it is not restraint so much as a lack of the physical vocabulary that draws them.
The defending is done with feet and stick. Against a heavy forechecking club it is not enough and last season there were nights when it was visibly not enough.
The Intangibles
The seventh pick of the 2022 draft, from Saskatoon, playing his first professional season in a league twelve years older than he is. He was not sheltered and he did not hide, and a minus-39 accepted at nineteen without the ice time being taken away is the club’s judgement rather than his failing.
Everything about him at 20 is a bet. The skating is real, the exit is real, and the rest is unwritten.
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 1,332 minutes
- Expected goals
- 40.8%
- 5th pct
- Shot attempts
- 44.4%
- 14th pct
share of the chances while he was out there
share of the attempts while he was out there
Goals while he was on the ice: 34 for, 64 against. Expected: 46.0 and 66.8.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 2 points of one another. It was written for a back edition, with the seasons that followed already known. Neither the agreement nor the gap says anything about the eye, and this report is excluded from the club-level comparison for the same reason.
Both bars are percentiles among the 201 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 53 on their own scale — against every other report's mean. The numbers bar ranks his share of expected goals. A gap is a disagreement about where he belongs, not two scales talking past each other.
Usual linemates
2023-24 · 1332 minutes at five-on-five
- Jaycob Megnanow FLA29%
- Seth Jones18%
Share of his five-on-five ice time spent alongside each player, measured from shift charts. Special teams are excluded: a power-play unit is not a line.
Why the numbers land there
Five-on-five, 2023-24
- The club
- CHI took 41.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 40.8% — 1.1 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Second pair, 1,332 minutes at five-on-five — 91st percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Philipp Kurashev | 39.7% | 41.3% | 44.9% |
| Connor Bedard | 38.2% | 41.9% | 44.0% |
| Jaycob Megna | 37.4% | 42.0% | 45.4% |
39.7% together, 41.3% for him apart and 44.9% for Kurashev apart. Kurashev was better away from him while his own share held, which is a mark against him more than for him.
Expected-goal share while both were on the ice, and for each man in the minutes he played without the other. Apart is the pair subtracted from his own totals. It does not settle who was carrying whom — apart from each other, both were still playing with somebody — but it does say whether the share travelled when the pairing broke up.
Where he shoots from
goal on goal missed
130 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 5 of them goals. His median goal came from 47 feet. 4% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 82% from beyond forty.