VANCOUVER, British Columbia — It’s safe to say the extra opportunity created by Connor Bedard’s injury has not turned around Blackhawks forward Lukas Reichel’s season.
Reichel has not stepped up as the Hawks’ go-to forward — the way he did last spring before Bedard’s arrival. Instead, Reichel has become even less impactful — in line with the Hawks’ overall offensive struggles without Bedard. That latter outcome always did seem more likely, but there was hope the former would somehow produce.
The Reichel saga reached another low point Monday as coach Luke Richardson made him a healthy scratch for what turned out to be a 2-0 loss to the Canucks.
Richardson has regained some flexibility within the forward depth chart because scrap-pile pickups Rem Pitlick and Zach Sanford have proved themselves to be competent role-fillers and Nick Foligno and Ryan Donato have recovered from a fractured finger and the flu, respectively.
Richardson used the opportunity to send messages to Reichel and Cole Guttman, the latter of whom also sat out because of some recent defensive struggles.
“Maybe [they will get] a different perspective looking down on the game,” Richardson said. “It looks a little easier. But then [it’s about] taking that perspective . . . and putting it into your game.”
Reichel’s demotion to the press box comes after he tallied just one assist in eight games since Bedard broke his jaw Jan. 5.
Reichel’s playing time, which surged to 18:39 and 19:40 on Jan. 5 and Jan. 7, has sagged to 13:03 and 11:18 in the last two games. He has tallied zero shots on goal in the last three games. On the season, he has three goals and six assists in 45 games.
Richardson doesn’t sound nearly as frustrated right now with the fashionable German forward as he was back on Dec. 3 in Minnesota — when he scratched Reichel for the first time this season — but the two of them did talk Monday morning.
“It’s not like he’s playing terrible defensively, but we need him to spark a little bit more offense and get that confidence going offensively,” Richardson said.
As an organization and coaching staff, the Hawks have handled Reichel’s disappointing season with plenty of patience and long-term perspective, and they’ve worked especially closely with him to try to rebuild his confidence.
Assistant coach Derek King recently showed Reichel clips from the win over the Flames in January last year, when he tallied three points in a dominant performance that felt like his true NHL arrival.
That’s about the 20th different thing the Hawks have done over the past few months to try to jump-start him, though, and nothing has worked so far. When a problem is more psychological than physical or technical — as this one seems to be — it’s more difficult to remedy.
“We all love him as a guy, and we all believe in him as a player,” Foligno said Sunday. “He knows what makes him great, and he [needs] to believe in that again and understand the work . . . you have to do to get back to that, on- and off-ice and in your head.”
One more tangible reason for concern involves Reichel’s passing, which he arguably has never established as NHL-caliber.
Although his impressive stat line last season — seven goals and eight assists in 23 games — has been frequently cited as a reason for long-term optimism, it papered over the fact his rate of shot assists (passes that directly lead to shots by teammates) was the second-lowest on the team, according to All Three Zones. This season, Reichel’s shot-assist rate is the lowest on the team.
His indisputably elite skating and agility, his point-per-game production in the AHL the last two seasons and his age (21) all work in his favor. The longer he goes this season without turning things around, though, the more worrying the situation becomes.
