Blackhawks select Kirby Dach with No. 3 pick in NHL Draft

VANCOUVER — Kirby Dach was a consensus top-10 pick entering the 2019 NHL Draft, a growing power forward with high upside and plenty of skill.

But the No. 3 overall pick? That’s an unexpected gamble by the Blackhawks that will be perhaps thrilling, perhaps painful and undeniably fascinating to evaluate over the coming decade.

Indeed, it’s the Saskatoon center Dach — not Bowen Byram, not Alex Turcotte, not even relative dark horses Trevor Zegras and Dylan Cozens — who became on Friday the face of the Hawks’ next generation, the kid chosen to singlehandedly revive a forward prospect pipeline that began the weekend pretty dry.

Even Dach himself seemed surprised.

“I didn’t talk to anybody today. It was kind of quiet, I didn’t hear anything,” he said. “And then all of a sudden, my name was being called.”

It’s a bold decision by Stan Bowman and the Hawks scouting staff, who weren’t thought to be likely to choose the Canadian until a swarm of rumors emerged in the final hours.

Dach, nonetheless, does bring plenty to the table.

“You’re projecting — if each of these players becomes the best version of themselves, what would that look like?” Bowman said. “If you look at the player that he could become if everything works out and he reaches his most potential, that’s a really impressive player. And that’s the kind of player you can’t get anywhere.”

The 6-foot-4 Alberta native looks an old-school power forward, and gets to the net mouth and the dirty areas of the ice like one, too.

And yet that label undersells his full skillset. Dach is a deceptively good playmaker, waiting for the right pass or shot to develop and using his soft hands to maintain possession until that opportunity presents itself, and uses his long reach and high physicality effectively to defend his own goal.

He also tallied a solid 25 goals and 48 assists in 62 games in the Western Hockey League this past season.

“I’m a great 200-foot player, and I can see the ice really well and see plays before they happen,” he said at the combine. “That’s something I’ve noticed playing at the junior level that I’m a little more advanced [at] than others.”

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Dach should be a quality top-six player in the NHL, particularly after another year or two of development. Still, he lacks the skating speed of Turcotte (who went fifth to the Kings) and the flashy highlight reel of Zegras (who slid to the Ducks at No. 9), two forwards considered far more likely than Dach to land in Chicago.

What he doesn’t lack is attentiveness to his own end. Dach projects as one of the best defensive forwards in the draft class, which likely helped allure the Hawks into his camp — in the long run, he’ll hopefully help the franchise stop its back-end bleeding without further complicating the already overcrowded defenseman depth chart.

Dach said Friday that he’s tried to model his game after the Jets’ Mark Scheifele, and that comparison fits well. “Just that kind of bigger, courageous centerman who plays hard up and down the ice,” he explained.

Hawks scouting director Mark Kelley canceled a planned trip to Europe to watch the WHL playoffs after the draft lottery shock in April. Byram, the draft’s consensus top blueliner, was in those playoffs. But so was Dach, and although his Blades were eliminated in the second round, the team’s first-line center clearly impressed.

“I love playing in the playoffs,” Dach laughed Friday.

His broad shoulders will be asked to balance a lot of pressure as a top-three pick in one of the league’s biggest markets. The career trajectories of the prospects passed over in his favor won’t help, either.

Dach was all smiles Friday, though, and insisted his grin wouldn’t fade away anytime soon. It better not — the Hawks just went all-in on that bet.