I have always appreciated and respected how thoughtful Blackhawks center
Jason Dickinson‘s perspective is about a wide range of topics. We’ve talked about everything from effort in practice to penalty kill style to approaches in the faceoff circle and having young kids. (Which, by the way, congrats to the Dickinsons for adding a beautiful baby to their family this summer.)
So when the Blackhawks opened a new year on Thursday with a new head coach, a very different (read: younger) roster, I chatted with him about his early perspectives where things are and where they’re headed.
The good news: Dickinson is healthy and feels great starting camp. After having the best offensive season of his career and earning votes for the Selke Trophy votes, Dickinson was limited to 59 games last year. His absence was painfully apparent in the Blackhawks’ bottom six in the second half of the season; having him back on the ice will be important this year both from an on-ice production standpoint and because of his leadership role.
David Banks-Imagn Images
Opportunity Knocks
Last year,
Ilya Mikheyev — another player the Blackhawks seemingly stole from the Canucks in a salary dump trade — followed Dickinson’s lead and had a really nice bounce-back season after injuries left his time in Vancouver underwhelming. This year, the Blackhawks are hoping
André Burakovsky can be the next in the line of “salary dump” reclamation projects who take advantage of an opportunity in Chicago.
Dickinson likes what Burakovsky can bring to the current situation in the Blackhawks’ room and on the ice.
“I had a tough year in Vancouver and I was given a shot here and it worked for me,” he said. “The beauty of a rebuild is it gives opportunities not only to young guys to make the team and show what they can do, but also veterans get a chance to refresh and get back to what they once were with, I don’t want to say lower expectations, but without the pressure of where you were and what they wanted from you and who you were ‘supposed’ to be.
You come to a new team in the middle of a rebuild and maybe we’re not asking Burkie to put up 70 points a year like Seattle would’ve been hoping for. We’re asking him to come in and set a standard and create a culture. The points will come, but primarily your job is be the guy that won a Cup in Colorado and Washington. Bring that standard here and help show the guys what it took to win those Cups and be a winning player. And he did it young in his career, so he can relate to all these guys in that age bracket to be like, ‘I was there in the biggest moment at your age.'”
Take this for whatever it’s worth because today was the first day of camp, but the Blackhawks had Burakovsky on a line with
Ryan Donato and
Connor Bedard on Thursday. If those three get some run together and it works, we could see a really nice bounce-back campaign from the guy Seattle needed to dump this summer.
A New Day
We’ve talked a lot about the Blackhawks “working to establish the right culture” over the past three years, so I know going there again might feel a bit cliché to some in our midst. But this year’s camp is unique: there’s a new head coach and a collection of young players beginning their professional careers together at the same time. Some young players, like Bedard,
Frank Nazar and
Landon Slaggert, might have a year or two of professional hockey under their belts, but the volume of new players on the ice who are staying pro this year is significant for the organization.
I asked Dickinson about how different the start of this year’s camp is to the previous training camps he’s attended with the Blackhawks. This will be Dickinson’s fourth season with the Blackhawks, but he wasn’t here for the start of training camp his first season; the Blackhawks acquired him from Vancouver on Oct. 7, 2022.
Dickinson said he didn’t want to try to compare any coaches’ styles or approaches and didn’t want to go back over past players, teammates and roster makeups. But his first impressions from new Blackhawks head coach Jeff Blashill are that he’s going to work as hard as he’s asking the players to work this year.
“One thing I’ve noticed with Blash is he is extremely intense and he expects us to match his intensity. And he’s extremely detailed and expects us to match his detail,” Dickinson said Thursday. “So, what he brings to the table, he expects nothing less [from the players]. It doesn’t seem like he’s going to ask us to do something that he’s not willing to do himself, and he’s pushing us extremely hard. His expectations for us are high — but that’s because his expectations for himself are just as high.”
Both Dickinson and Blashill talked about how critical it is for young players to start their professional journeys with the right, winning habits. That was a point of emphasis with the structure in Blashill’s first day as the Blackhawks head coach. And it’s going to continue to be something they focus on moving forward.
Blackhawks captain
Nick Foligno said it was an intense practice — more than many of the first days he’s experienced during his career. Dickinson and Foligno both talked about how important it is for the youth movement to learn to play the game the right way at the NHL level, and their new head coach echoed those statements after two long practices.
Dickinson said Blashill working to set the bar right away is only going to make the players — and the Blackhawks as a team and organization — better.
“The hardest thing is to create a habit or break a habit,” he said. “So if [Blashill] can create habits from day one for them in the NHL, their career is going to benefit. This organization is going to benefit. Everybody that gets to play with those guys is going to benefit. It’s a trickle down effect of — it’s so cliché, but it is the only term that works — the culture. Creating that culture that there are no freebies; there’s no other way to do it. The expectation is this, and if you don’t meet it, then move on. There’s no time for it. There’s no time for holding hands because we’re grown men and this is a business and a hard league to stick in. And if he sets that standard, then it’s going to be a high standard and it’s expected from every single one of us, no matter who you are and how long you’ve been here.”
The Blackhawks are embarking on a new season, the likes of which we haven’t seen in nearly two decades. The youth movement is finally starting to arrive. Blashill is now charged with creating the culture that changes course for the franchise from losing with purpose to winning with speed.
And the good news for Blashill as the new head coach is he has veterans like Dickinson in the room that are buying in and have the same expectations. The legacy for the players in the room like Dickinson and Foligno will be how the new culture of the Chicago Blackhawks turns years of finishing at or near the bottom of the standings into sustained winning at the highest level.
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