Penguins' Dominik Kahun showing his skills are 1st-line worthy
No goals and two points over his first 11 games with a new team? Being a healthy scratch for the first time in his NHL career?
Not pleasant, sure, Dominik Kahun said Wednesday in looking back to the first month of this season. But it was going to take more than that to rattle a player who went undrafted (twice) and had to wait until past his 23rd birthday before he was entrusted with NHL game duty.
“Sometimes, that’s normal, you know?” Kahun said of slumps. “I think in sports, you don’t always have good times. It’s up-and-down sometimes, and that’s OK.”
Kahun is having a decidedly “up” time right now for the Pittsburgh Penguins. Promoted to the top line soon after the season-ending injury to Jake Guentzel, Kahun has six points over his past four games skating on the left side of world-class center Evgeni Malkin and the team’s hottest winger, Bryan Rust.
“He just has good instincts, and he has the ability to finish,” Penguins coach Mike Sullivan said of Kahun. “You can see when those guys (on that line) come through the neutral zone with speed, the threat they can pose. (Rust), his north-south speed is a good as it gets. Dom and (Malkin) are just so good at holding onto pucks, creating time and space, allowing plays to develop. They’ve had pretty good chemistry since we’ve put them together.”
Malkin, Rust and Kahun have combined for seven goals and 12 assists over the past five games they’ve spent on a line together, and the Penguins have gone 4-1-0. The six points for Kahun since Jan. 7 match what he tallied each month in October and December.
Kahun, in fact, had just two points until the 26th day of his first month with the Penguins, meaning he was limited to just two assists over his first 11 games of the season — not exactly the kind of impression he planned to make after his offseason acquisition from the Chicago Blackhawks in exchange for popular defenseman Olli Maatta.
Then, for the first game of November, Kahun was a healthy scratch. Sullivan was almost apologetic, and the scratch came Nov. 2 against the Edmonton Oilers, when the team boasted as close as it has had to a healthy lineup.
After going undrafted and plying his trade in the top German professional league (the DEL) for four seasons, Kahun signed with the Blackhawks in 2018 and had 13 goals and 37 points in 82 games.
“Obviously, I was a little disappointed when I didn’t get drafted, a couple of years there for sure,” said Kahun, who grew up in Germany and won a silver medal at the 2018 Olympics. “But then I thought, ‘I just have to make my way through back home. If I played well in Europe, and I played good with the national team, then I will get my chance.’ And that’s how it went.”
Meshing well with a talent such as Malkin shouldn’t come as a surprise. Kahun spent plenty of minutes skating on Chicago’s top line last season with future Hall of Famer Jonathan Toews.
“I think I’ve got (competitiveness) — I compete every game and try to play at both ends with energy and with speed,” Kahun said. “So I think that’s why they use me sometimes everywhere, because I can bring sometimes all that stuff.”
Rust similarly has been deployed in a variety of roles. He gushes about Kahun as a linemate.
“He thinks the game at such a high level,” Rust said. “He’s able to make those tight-little-space plays and find open ice. Any time you have a guy like that on your line, it kind of buys you more time to either get yourself to open space or to make a play.
“Also, he works (hard). Any time you have any linemate who works that hard, it makes everything a little easier for everybody else.”
Chris Adamski is a TribLive reporter who has covered primarily the Pittsburgh Steelers since 2014 following two seasons on the Penn State football beat. A Western Pennsylvania native, he joined the Trib in 2012 after spending a decade covering Pittsburgh sports for other outlets. He can be reached at cadamski@triblive.com.
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