TAMPA, Fla. — Jeremy Colliton finally admitted something Thursday that Blackhawks fans have longed to hear for weeks:
He should’ve put Dominik Kubalik on the top power-play unit a long time before he actually did.
“Yeah, and I wish we would have put [Patrick Kane] on the other side earlier,” the Hawks coach said. “We tried it off and on, throughout since I’ve been here, and we just haven’t been able to get it to click with enough success for everyone to embrace it. But we’ve been able to here, and it’s a nice weapon for us.”
Colliton is referring to displacing Kane from his usual right-side faceoff-circle spot, moving Kubalik — now the Hawks’ leading goal-scorer, with 29 goals to Kane’s 28 — instead into that spot, and reassigning Kane to the equivalent left-side role.
After months of forced Kane cross-ice passes to left-side staple Alex DeBrincat — very few of which actually connected — and overall malaise on the power play, causing the talented unit to briefly slip into dead last in the NHL, the Kubalik-led shuffle has brought back some life.
With Kubalik on the right, Kane in the left, DeBrincat humorously screening the goalie and Duncan Keith up top (and Jonathan Toews, per usual, also roaming around), the Hawks have gone 6-for-19 on power play opportunities the past four games after going 0-for-17 the prior six games.
It’s only the second time all season the Hawks have scored a power-play goal in four straight contests.
“Since we got together, the first couple power plays were good but just didn’t go in, so we were just trying to stay with it, just keep shooting,” Kubalik said Thursday. “I’m really happy that the power play’s working right now.”
Kubalik, with his bombing one-timer and magnetism toward the net, has been a big part of that recent uptick. He now leads the Hawks in shots on goal per minute of power play time and trails just Kane and DeBrincat in scoring chances per minute.
Even simply having him on the ice seems to improve the unit overall. It forces the Hawks to diversify their strategies and move the puck more, rather than Kane holding it for five or 10 seconds at a time while scanning for a brilliant play. That, in turn, forces the opposing penalty kill to spread out, move around and divide their attention.
Since promoting Kubalik on Feb. 11 in Edmonton, the Hawks’ top unit has averaged 2.10 shot attempts, 1.18 shots on goal and 1.05 scoring chances per minute — enormous increases over the team’s season averages of 1.56, 0.86 and 0.85 in those categories, respectively. If the Hawks’ post-Kubalik-promotion averages were their season averages, they’d lead the league in all three areas.
So why, exactly, was Kubalik not given a PP1 tryout earlier? Well, this was Colliton’s logic on Jan. 10 for keeping him off it:
“[Kubalik’s] more of a one-time threat,” Colliton said. “I don’t think he’s really a half-wall player; that’s typically where Kaner plays. There’s one reason for you.”
He also offered a second reason.
“For Kaner [to make passes], he probably needs righties to shoot. Kuby’s a lefty. That doesn’t meant there aren’t other ways to build a power play, but for now that’s what we’re doing.”
Clearly, neither handedness nor half-wall unfamiliarity has inhibited Kubalik’s adjustment in recent weeks.
Yet at this point, it’s largely for naught — the Hawks’ playoffs hopes are long gone. That reality makes Kubalik’s absence from the top power play for the season’s first four months all the more frustrating.
But at least Colliton has finally acknowledged his regret.
