Player Profile: A preview of the new Penguins forward, Dominik Kahun

On Saturday night, it was announced that the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Chicago Blackhawks had traded a fairly large contract, sending defenseman Olli Maatta to Chi-town for striker Dominik Kahun. Pittsburgh also adds a fifth-round pick in the trade.

The writing was on the wall for Maatta to be expelled from the city considering that he had a bad 2018-1919 season and that he was in good health for the last three games of the playoffs playoffs.

In the future, what can pens expect from Kahun? What kind of player is he? Let us dive into a quick and dirty report of Saturday night.

Required hockeydb

An interesting and unique career path, and certainly a less traveled path. Kahun joined the OHL as an importer, but he was never on track and was not crushed in 2013 and 2014, and then returned to Europe. He played in the German league and did well at the 2018 Olympics by scoring five points (2 goals plus 3 assists) in seven games. Chicago signed with him for last season and as a 23-year NHL rookie he scored 37 points in 82 games in the series.

Cap hit

This is very favorable, Kahun will be on the second and final year of his entry-level contract in 2019-2020, which corresponds to a salary cap of $ 925,000. He will be a restricted free agent in the summer of 2020. This is good news for the Pens to dispose of Maatta after hitting a cap of $ 4.083 million for an attacker under a million.

Scouting report

Hockey News:

Strengths: Has a good enough skill and skill for the game at the highest level. Can play the three positions forward, which also adds to its overall value for a team. Is pretty responsible, too.

Defects: its size and strength are insufficient. It must therefore prove itself on North American professional ice surfaces (narrower than in Europe). Need to pull more on the puck.

Career Potential: Qualified, Versatile Front with Some Benefits

Performance of the 2018-19 season

As an NHL rookie last year, Kahun had a pretty decent year. From Second City Hockey last month:

With 13 goals and 37 points, Kahun is eighth in the Blackhawks. Artem Anisimov scored more goals than him, but Kahun had more assists. At 5 to 5, Kahun's points for 60 (1.89) and main points for 60 (1.59) were both fifths of the team. He earned the seventh best over replacement win with a .8 and the seventh best goal over replacement with a score of 4.8 among the Blackhawks.

I do not want to totally kill Kahun, but a young player, not much, not physically, born in Czech, does not score a ton of goals (13 in 82 games last year), but has statistics solid rates and helps to be a secondary option. ? It looks a bit like another Dominik, Dominik Simon. Kahun probably has some more gaming skills but I'm not saying that they are clones or anything, but the similarities make me definitely ring a bell. Especially with the sum of SCH:

Kahun should continue to play an important role (if he is reduced) with the Blackhawks next season. It is a player who can be connected to the center and who can, occasionally, play on the first, if the need arises.

The most whimsical stats

SCH explained this:

The positive ~ 1 Kahun scored offensive goals, expected goals, and Corsi, as well as expected defensive goals, mean he has a standard deviation of the order of 0.5 to 0.67, which means that Kahun is doing his job well. The negative in the power play goals and Corsi means he has a standard deviation worse than average on the power play, which is … not good

Kahun scored just two points in overtime all season in 87 minutes, so if that tells you anything, he should not be used with this group. But he is a positive player with equal strength and good things happen to him on the ice at 5v5, which is good!

It's a pretty sight to behold, a lot of offensive opportunities for Chicago last year when Kahun was on the ice. However, like many of his team-mates, it seems that Kahun did not have a lot of suppression and that he often played in a "run-n-gun" style with a lot of activity at both ends of the ice, because he was checking his rate.

So, stylistically, Kahun should definitely fit into a Pittsburgh team that also has a high octane rating and who is not afraid to exchange chances at both ends of the rink. And it's a point to show a difference from Simon, who is able to suppress the shots.

Strong points

Glad to see him go on the net, and there was a certain habit of scoring goals in referrals, broken games or little things ahead like that. So, some nice hands on the display, but it's a series of scoring goals and he scored only 13 goals in 82 games, so keep that in mind.

Conclusion

When the Pens were a great team, they had a second and even a third option online. Call them passengers, support players, whatever you want. Guys like Pascal Dupuis, Chris Kunitz, Carl Hagelin, Bryan Rust. I'm not sure Kahun is in the mold of most of those players who were all failed-controlled before, but Kahun has already shown that he could score 37 points in the NHL in 14 minutes by match. It can be good for about one point each game like that and add depth in the top nine, that's fine.

Better, the Pens badly needed the flexibility of the salary cap and treat a defender $ 4 million for a winger of $ 925,000 is just as logical.

It does not really look like a big deal on the first day, but it helps to rebalance a team that is too heavy in terms of defense wage commitment and that needs a little more skill in advance. This deal seems to offer that, with a qualifier that Kahun will probably not be a player who will make the difference. He's a guy on a team, but in 2018-1919 he proved that he could be productive in an efficient way and that he could help 5v5 on any line on which you want to put it. Players like these are useful and the pens should be useful to him.