Brandon Saad has been fantastic for the Blackhawks this season.
And he’s aware of it.
“On a consistent basis, this is some of the best hockey I’ve ever played,” he said Sunday.
Saad has been a remarkably consistent forward throughout his career, both for the Hawks and Blue Jackets. In five of his six full NHL seasons, he’s played between 78 and 82 games and scored between 47 and 53 points. That’s an uncanny level of year-to-year regularity.
On paper, 2019-20 is on pace to be, well, another typical Saad season: 82 games, 46 points.
But underneath, the 27-year-old winger is dominating the NHL to a degree never before seen.
“You look at several of the games lately, he’s doing a good job of driving the puck deep, protecting it, force the opposition to make a read in coverage [and] take it to the net,” coach Jeremy Colliton said Sunday. “That’s obviously a big strength of his.”
Those are indeed big strengths — and they also essentially encompass every duty asked of a power forward like Saad. Through 34 games, he leads the Hawks in both shot attempt differential and scoring chance differential.
He’s regularly made his teammates better, too. In October, the line of Saad-David Kampf-Dominik Kubalik was the Hawks’ most reliable. In December, the duo of Saad and Jonathan Toews, alongside first Alex Nylander and now Kubalik, has been the Hawks’ best. It’s not hard to identify the common variable there.
So how has he done it? After six nearly identical years, what has noticeably elevated him towards stardom in the seventh?
“I had a good offseason training, but mentally, [I’m] a little bit clearer with not overthinking things and being more relaxed,” he said. “Just doing that more consistently on a day-to-day basis, game-to-game, and it’s helped my play on the ice.”
He spent his summer working often 1-on-1 with Hawks trainer Brian Keane, a change from the group sessions he used to partake it. He read a lengthy list of psychology books and perfected some mental visualization techniques. He also became a father to a baby boy, Teo.
That increased worldliness helped Saad not feel tempted to deviate from his effective style even when it recently wasn’t translating much onto the scoreboard (thus his mere 46-point pace right now).
On Dec. 2 versus the Blues, Saad “seemed to be able to create with whoever he was with,” prompting Colliton to temporarily put him with worse linemates to maximize the lineup’s efficiency. Yet that game began a stretch of six straight in which Saad, despite doing everything right, was held pointless.
Then finally on Saturday, again against the Blues, the dam broke. Saad scored twice — first on an innocent sliding shot that somehow beat Jordan Binnington, the second an impressive move around Binnington — and then added another, the game-winner, Sunday versus the Wild.
“The biggest thing for me especially is just working for chances,” he said. “When you get that, you have a better percentage obviously for them to go in. And then you get a fluky goal and you’re feeling good about yourself.”
If he continues to play this well, Saad should enjoy a more productive 48 games from here out. He’s generating high-danger chances at such a frequent rate that upward regression on his conversion rate feels inevitable.
But even that doesn’t come to fruition, the new, even-more-mature Saad won’t be too bothered.
“A lot of comes down to experience,” he said. “The more experience you have, you’ve been through good seasons and bad seasons, and you can just relax and focus on what you do best.”
