Two Blackhawks fans held a large Czech flag up to the glass behind the net during warmups Tuesday, showing appreciation for Dominik Kubalik before what might’ve been his final home game at the United Center.
Despite all of the attention on the eventual 2-1 shootout loss potentially being Marc-Andre Fleury’s Chicago sendoff, Kubalik and Calvin de Haan realistically have much higher odds of being gone by Monday’s trade deadline.
The Hawks are making progress on a Kubalik trade, a source said Wednesday, with the Ducks and Oilers — two teams long linked to the 26-year-old wing — still the frontrunners.
If that deal materializes, it would mark a frustrating, unsatisfying end to Kubalik’s once-promising Hawks tenure.
He has endured an awful season. His once-elite shooting ability, which caught the Hawks’ eye during his 2018-19 MVP season in Switzerland and earned him his first NHL contract in 2019-20, has faded significantly.
At even strength, Kubalik has attempted 13.0 shots per 60 minutes, down from 15.2 and 15.4 his first two seasons. Only 52.4% of those have been recorded as scoring chances, down from 63.7% and 57.9% his first two seasons. And he has hit the net on just 56.0% of those attempts, down from 58.5% and 63.4% his first two seasons.
On the power play, his trends admittedly do look a lot better, but they’re not leading to an uptick in production there.
The end result is Kubalik has scored just 11 goals in 61 games this season (0.18 goals per game) after ripping 30 goals in 68 games as a rookie (0.44 per game) — en route to a third-place finish in Calder Trophy voting — and adding 17 goals in 56 games (0.30 per game) last year. In his last 18 games, he has scored just once.
“It’s obviously hard to expect that,” Kubalik said on March 8. “You always want to be better; you always want more. Even when you score two goals, you’re thinking about a hat trick.
“If you don’t score, you’re thinking about putting some shots on and creating something for yourself or your teammates. Find a different way, that’s what I’m trying to do. This season, I had stretches where I had a lot of shots and I didn’t score, then I had less shots and I scored. It’s just what it is. Even if I’m not producing, I’ve got to do something to help the team win.”
Interim coach Derek King has held several lengthy one-on-one video review sessions with Kubalik this season to try to rejuvenate him, and he recently lauded Kubalik for being “confident enough where he can just come in, sit down and talk.”
Indeed, Kubalik has presented himself throughout his 2.5-year Hawks tenure as exceptionally honest, accountable and forthright, and he has become an equally popular teammate behind closed doors. He has helped the Hawks create a prospect pipeline from his hometown of Plzen, Czech Republic, and helped acclimated the likes of Philipp Kurashev and countryman Jakub Galvas into the locker room.
He’s unquestionably a talented player, too. His off-the-charts surge on Jonathan Toews’ wing in January 2020 won’t be forgotten for a while, as it demonstrated all the best parts of his game: a knack for finding scoring areas, underrated upper-body strength used to create space to shoot and, of course, a bullet of a shot.
Selling him off at the 2022 deadline at his lowest value in years probably wasn’t what Hawks management at the time envisioned in his future.
That’s not to say it’s unwise. Management has changed since then, and as a somewhat expensive pending restricted free agent, Kubalik doesn’t fit the rebuild too well. But it’d be a shame to see it his tenure end like this.
