On Monday morning, the published the arbitration dates for the restricted free agents who filed for that process. There’s one date that’s important to the Blackhawks: July 20, when they’ll meet with forward Philipp Kurashev and his representation if they can’t get a deal done.
It feels like Kurashev has been around forever, but he’ll turn 24 early in the 2023-24 season (Oct. 12). Chicago originally selected him in the fourth round (No. 120 overall) in the 2018 NHL Draft with a pick they received from Nashville in the Ryan Hartman trade.
I’m torn on what the Blackhawks should do with Kurashev.
Scott Powers at wrote a good piece on his view of the importance of the deal general manager gets done with Kurashev at the end of June. In it, Powers acknowledges that Kurashev might not be more than a third-line player long-term, but he’s young enough that he could be a guy who skates his way through the duration of the rebuild and is still around when the Blackhawks turn the corner.
Here’s what head coach Luke Richardson said about Kurashev at the end of last season:
“He had a little trouble scoring some goals with some quality chances, and he got frustrated and his confidence was down at times this year,” Richardson said in April. “He was such a good player at the beginning of the year that we felt the trust was there, not knowing him that much, that we could move him around anywhere. … We moved him all over. Sometimes that takes away from building chemistry with players, but he was coming on strong at the end. It’s too bad he got bumped because he showed some good chemistry with (Lukas) Reichel.
“I’m anxious to see that at t﷽he start of next year in training camp, and it was good we had that look th💮is year. Hopefully he can just feel comfortable that he made strides this year. Maybe stat-wise didn’t show it, but hockey-wise, it did.”
When the 2022-23 season opened, Kurashev was on the Blackhawks’ third line with Sam Lafferty and Jason Dickinson. And, in October of last year, I argued that was Chicago’s most important and best line. But injuries happened — especially the ankle sprain that cost Tyler Johnson a decent amount of time — and Kurashev’s role started to evolve and his responsibilities evolved. By the end of the season, he saw time at center on the top line and then had his season end prematurely because of an injury of his own.
I’m fascinated at the mention of his chemistry developing with Reichel by Richardson. One might think that could be a precursor to seeing a line of Kurashev-Reichel-Andreas Athanasiou to start the coming season. One would have to think that would be the Blackhawks’ second line with Connor Bedard centering a line with Taylor Hall and one of Ryan Donato or Taylor Raddysh to open the new year.
But the more I think about it, the more I would prefer the Blackhawks get back a third line combination that includes Dickinson and Kurashev. And I like the idea of Donato skating with those two as a replacement for Lafferty; I was a fan of what I saw from Joey Anderson last year, but his two-way co🔜ntract and the forward depth at the NHL level make it harder for him to have a great chance of making the NHL roster to start the year.
Which brings us all the way back to Kurashev. As CapFriendly reminds us, the Blackhawks only have 3-4 forwards — Hall, Donato and AA (and Bedard when his ELC is officially announced) — signed beyond the coming season. That means the Blackhawks: a) have plenty of cap space to sign Kurashev to a multi-year deal, but b) also have made clear they’re going to keep the deck clear to sign some of their younger players to extensions when the time comes. And the list of current prospects who need new paper in the near future includes Reichel, who’s an RFA at the end of the coming season.
If Kurashev is indeed a bottom-six player long-term (Powers makes a good comparison to Michael Frolik), then what’s the rush to give him more term than two years and a more significant cap hit than $1.5 million per? But, if he’s a guy who could be here through the rebuild process and be a veteran contributor beyond the next 2-3 years, is it worth making him secure enough to stay around?
We’ll see what the Blackhawks’ front office thinks about Kurashev in the coming days. The two sides now have a deadline to get a deal done before arbitration. Davidson has done a great job of adding veterans to the roster so they don’t need to give Kurashev too much term/money. But his perception of Kurashev’s value, and the deal they ultimately get done, will tell us a lot about how the organization views the pace of their rebuild.
