ST. PAUL, Minn. — One way or another, Sunday will end up marking a pivotal point in Lukas Reichel’s season.
After two months of struggles, the Blackhawks made the 21-year-old forward — their first-round pick in 2020 and top prospect for the past several years — a healthy scratch in their 4-1 loss to the Wild.
After trying seemingly every other option to spark him without avail, coach Luke Richardson decided it was time for a more dramatic, message-sending decision.
With newly acquired first-liner Anthony Beauvillier also unavailable for the game — since he hasn’t yet received his U.S. work visa — scratching Reichel left the Hawks’ forward corps even shallower on top-six talent, but there was a reason for that timing.
“I’m sure he’s disappointed, but we need more from him,” Richardson said. “We mentioned this should be him [taking advantage] when there’s an opportunity like Beauvillier not [being] available tonight...so we’re disappointed, as well.”
After tallying 15 points in 23 NHL games during the latter half of last season, emerging as arguably the team’s most dynamic forward following Patrick Kane’s departure, Reichel has looked nothing like that same player this fall.
He has tallied only six points in 22 games, including zero five-on-five goals, and the Hawks have been outscored 17-3 during his five-on-five ice time. At times, he has been nearly invisible.
Richardson gave him only 11:29 of ice time — his lowest this season — in Saturday’s loss to the Jets, but even that was significantly more than the zero minutes he played Sunday while sitting in the press box. The final straw might’ve been a transition attack in the third period Saturday where, instead of trying to push the pace and charge the net, Reichel curled up at the offensive blue line and then carelessly sent a pointless backward pass to nobody.
“When he plays with confidence, he seems to have excellent bursts of speed — which we know that he has — and it’s always used in the right direction,” Richardson said. “Now he’s thinking a little bit instead of reacting, and [he’s] chasing the game, and then we don’t see him very much in the game.
“He needs to watch from above tonight and then come back with a little bit of fire. But also [he needs to] regroup mentally so, physically, he can do his best out there.”
After general manager Kyle Davidson said in September that he saw Reichel as an NHL-caliber center, the Hawks deployed him in the middle for the first nine games of the season with very poor results.
“I’m pissed,” Reichel said back on Nov. 1. “I’m frustrated. I want to score. It’s more fun if you score, of course — that’s why I’m a forward. But I try to stay positive and keep working.”
That quote came on the day he was moved back to wing, and to be fair, the results have been slightly better since then. The team’s scoring-chance ratio during Reichel’s five-on-five ice time was a miserable 35.5% before then; it’s 47.1% since.
He still isn’t generating much offense, though. He has never been a high-volume shooter, and that has held true this season: his average of 9.2 shot attempts (per 60 minutes at five-on-five) ranks 12th among 14 Hawks forwards, ahead of only MacKenzie Entwistle and now-terminated Corey Perry. A marked difference from last season, conversely, is that he’s not really setting up his teammates for many shots, either.
Long-term, one healthy scratch probably won’t solve the entire problem. Then again, long-term, two months of struggles don’t doom — or even necessarily derail — a career.
But the Hawks need Reichel to turn things around eventually, and it feels like it will be significant whether that turnaround happens this coming week or remains elusive.
