Every player has to learn to grind to some extent, this isn't pond hockey. People too quick to blame coaching for everything. He was a 7th overall pick in a draft that was weaker at the top compared to most drafts. He's gonna take some time and was hardly bust-proof on Draft Day. Honestly, his deployment is fine. They give him the highest share of offensive zone start time amongst Hawks defensemen, he is 41st in the NHL in terms of total Powerplay Time on Ice amongst Defensemen. They aren't intentionally throwing him to the wolves like Phillips and Crevier and watching him drown in a bad spot.
The issue with Korchinski is that with Murphy out, and throw Zaitsev being out as well who could have been a Backup, there isn't a suitable 2nd pair D partner for him. Both are natural right-handed defensemen, as is Jones, who is busy playing somewhere around 45 minutes a game as is and he/Vlasic give one real NHL pair. And more importantly, Korchinski will ideally play a similar "role" to Jones and so you'd like them to be on a different pairs. So that leaves him with Megna, a waiver fodder guy. And the Hawks are terrible in general so it's not like there's strong Forward support to prop him up.
They were always going to deploy him softly, I don't think there was a choice, that's not the problem imo. He always was and still is somewhat of puck player type gamble. The problem is what they allow him to do with that deployment.
If it's not coaching, it's the front office evaluating the player wrong or hiring the wrong coach for that kid. 2 points in 2 months and almost as many games with less than one shot than with more than one shot on the year should be a red flag that something isn't connecting in hockey ops top to bottom.
His deployment (pp unit construction and pp2) is not all that good when the minutes are broken down, he's not allowed to be creative in those deployments (benched from oz deployments early in the year after mistakes, pulled from pp1 after 2 turnovers, etc. etc. etc.). It's like he's playing with a shock collar so something has to give a bit. I'm not worried about the jumpiness we see some shifts, that will take a couple more years. I'm worried about the forced decisions. See it on wings quite a bit, not used to seeing it on a dman.
When a player is forcing their own decisions, I attribute that to coaching or a coach not recognizing it in a player. The younger the kid the more responsibility should be on the staff.
He'll have a huge runway, but I don't like what I see with him and this staff. Here's to hoping my eyes are lying to me.
