Rewind a full year. Jason Dickinson was reporting to camp in Vancouver with some unrest in that organization. The Canucks were looking to find some cap flexibility with younger players needing to get paid in the not-too-d♒istant future, and Dickinson was coming off a disappointing first season with the club.
As their front office evaluated their options, the decision was made to move on from Dickinson. He was traded to the Blackhawks on Oct. 7 — with a 2024 second-round pick, remember — for defenseman Riley Stillman.
Dickinson came to Chicago near the end of camp and joined a center group with Jonathan Toews, the longest tenured captain in the franchise’s history, and Max Domi. A veteran Blackhawks team was looking to him to hopefully solidify the bottom-six.
As the year progressed, players got hurt and traded and, on occasion, Dickinson found himself suddenly skating with the likes of a Patrick Kane. Overall, the season was a very good first go-round in Chicago. Dickinson tied his career-best mark of nine goals and set a new career-best with 30 points, all while displaying enough versatility to make himself an important part of the Blackhawks’ roster.
Let’s now catch up with Monday, Sept. 25, 2023. The Blackhawks hosted an intra-squad scrimmage that had way too many bodies for the amount of time they were skating, but we’re starting to get an idea of what the lines might look like.
And Jason Dickinson finds himself, now — one year later — as the longest tenured center on the Blackhawks’ NHL depth chart.
All of the talk after the scrimmage was about Connor Bedard and Lukas Reichel — and rightfully so. They put on an offensive show. But Dickinson is now skating between two veterans, Nick Foligno and Corey Perry, in a bottom-six role. Not only is he totally fine with that, but he’s actually more comfortable there. And he’s looking forward to being a leader with the young centers in the room.
“I take such pride in the D-zone that it comes a lot more naturally and a lot easier,” Dickinson said after the scrimmage on Monday. “When you’re put in a position to play with top guys, they want to produce. I had to consciously tell myself, OK, I’d make reads here that I would want to play more defensively. But with these guys I know I’ve got to take a little bit more of a jump here, I might have to cheat. I might have to look for the offensive side of it. Whereas when I’m playing in that grittier role, my reads are instinctual and I know exactly what I want to do in a split second.”
Dickinson described his line as being a “gritty” one that’s going to be tough to play against. While they’re still working on chemistry, he noted that he had spent time with Perry in Dallas and Foligno is coming from Boston, where he played for Jim Montgomery. Dickinson credited Montgomery with helping build a strong foundation for him as a player at the NHL level, and said Foligno is saying things that are taking him back to his Dallas days because they’re how Montgomery coached the team back then.
Since his arrival, I have always found Dickinson to be a thoughtful player. Last season he consistently talked about what he was learning from Toews during practices and even during games. This year, he is now the veteran who will be fielding questions. And he told us he’s ready for that part of the process.
“I’ll try to give my tips and tricks and reads on guys that I’ve had the pleasure of taking faceoffs against,” he said. “More importantly, I’ll try to give them looks on catching pucks low and slow, being in the right spots, making sure the reads are good from the defensive zone so they can go on the offense. Those are the areas that I’ll try to spend more time with them to be like ‘Hey, you’ve got to be cheating more this way so that you can get on offense. I want you guys to go score. If you’re in a good spot, you’re going to be able to take it down the ice and go.'”
Now roughly 50 weeks removed from the trade to Chicago, Dickinson is settling in as a Blackhawk. He’s more comfortable in the room and the systems, and is already benefitting from having a full training camp.
Dickinson knows — he expects — he’ll take a bigger number of faceoffs this season. And he’ll be working in tougher, more defensive situations.
It might not get the headlines that winning the draft lottery did, or the return he got on trading the likes of Alex DeBrincat or Kirby Dach, but I submit the deal general manager Kyle Davidson made for Dickinson might be one of his more astute since taking over the role. And, in Dickinson, the Blackhawks have ♕a more comfortable, confident center ready to help the team take a big step forward this season.
