Kyle Davidson isn’t so much concerned about the Blackhawks’ present as he is the future.
Since being named the franchise’s permanent general manager, Davidson has fully committed to a rebuild. That largely means setting the Blackhawks up for future success. With every decision, he’s asking himself, “How does this get us to closer to being a Stanley Cup contender down the road?” Davidson’s goal is to put the Blackhawks in the best position with their roster, salary cap and prospects to consistently win big later this decade.
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You can think of all of his decisions falling somewhere on a scale. Some, like what he plans to do with Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews in the coming season, are significant and will likely have a huge impact on the rebuild’s future. Some are less important, like signing Reese Johnson to a two-year contract extension with an $800,000 cap hit — a low-risk, inexpensive move.
Somewhere in the middle of that scale is Davidson’s decision on what to do with 19-year-old forward prospect Lukas Reichel this season. Davidson could have either played Reichel in nine or fewer NHL games, which would push Reichel’s entry-level contract back a season, or Davidson could have played him 10 or more games, which would start his contract this season.
Davidson has been asked about this a number of times in the last few months.
On March 2, Davidson said: “There’s pros and cons to it, but I think the general plan for Lukas — because I think he’s the only one that’s really in that situation this year — is much bigger than that. It’s much bigger than any one year. He’s going to get the games that we feel are going to help him down the road. If that’s 11, if that’s 20, if that’s nine, we’ll figure that out at the end of the year, but that 10 is not in my mind at all. It’s more so what he’s ready for, what’s going to help him and what’s going to make him a better NHL player for us moving forward.”
More recently, Davidson said: “It kind of goes both ways (on whether to burn the first season of Reichel’s contract). You don’t really know because the agent can always offer, OK, let’s go really short (in the next contract), so we can get back some of that. So you can’t really game plan it that much. If he gets 10 games, that’s fine. I’m not too concerned with it, to be honest. I think once we’re looking at really spending to that cap and utilizing every dollar, I think he’s probably going to be in a different contract anyway, out of his entry-level. We burn it, we burn it. If it works out, it does. We’ll deal with it after.”
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Until recently, it was unclear what Davidson would do. Shortly after that second answer, he recalled Reichel from the AHL on April 5. Reichel had reached five NHL games at that point. Since then, he’s played in all of the Blackhawks’ games. Thursday’s game marked No. 9 for the season. On Friday, Reichel was still with the NHL club, and Blackhawks coach Derek King confirmed Reichel would be in his lineup Saturday.
On Saturday, Reichel was in the Blackhawks’ lineup against the Nashville Predators. With that, the first year of his three-year entry-level contract had officially begun. He’ll now be a restricted free agent after the 2023-24 season.
Like all of Davidson’s other decisions, he put time into this one. He downplayed the significance of Reichel’s contract clock beginning this season, but sources say Davidson and his staff put a lot of thought and discussion into the decision. They weren’t always in agreement, either.
So, what went into the final decision?
The Blackhawks believe that burning Reichel’s first year now will likely cost them less on his second contract. While the Blackhawks are quite hopeful Reichel will become a star, the thought is Reichel will be a better player when he’s 22 years old than he is at 21. By burning the season now, he’ll be 21 when he’s due his second contract, not 22.
The assumption is also that Reichel will have fewer career points after three seasons by burning the season now instead of waiting a year. Reichel wouldn’t be arbitration-eligible regardless of when his first contract ended (he’ll need one more season), but he’d still likely have more leverage in negotiations if he had three solid seasons of production instead of two.
It’s clear through Reichel’s first 10 NHL games he isn’t ready to dominate. He’s shown flashes of his potential, but he needs more time to develop and gain muscle. He will certainly be sent back to Rockford in the coming weeks to take part in the IceHogs’ playoff push. A season from now, maybe he’ll need more time down there again. Davidson has been adamant he wants to take a more patient approach with his prospects. King spoke Friday about where he thinks Reichel’s game stands.
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“I think he’s come, not a long ways, but he’s come a little ways,” King said. “But I don’t think he’s quite ready. I mean, if you had him on a stronger team, that you could support him a lot better and hide him a little more, I think it’d be better for the kid. But we don’t have that luxury right now. So you’re putting a young kid in with young kids and they’re making mistakes. So, it doesn’t help. So, he’s going to be a hockey player. He’s got everything you want. He’s just light and he’s young.”
Davidson likely assumes Reichel will sign a bridge deal after his first contract. Reichel’s agent will likely want to get to that third contract as soon as possible to get his client more money. But that second, short-term contract does allow Davidson to roughly game plan his cap space for the 2024-25 and 2025-26 seasons, when he has Reichel on a smaller cap number, and then begin looking ahead to the 2026-27 season and beyond when Reichel’s cap hit could take a more sizeable jump. Davidson can start figuring out where Reichel’s contracts might fit in the bigger picture with Seth Jones’s deal ($9.5 million cap hit through 2029-30), Alex DeBrincat’s next contract (probably $9 million to $10 million on a long-term deal) and possibly re-signing Kane and Toews when their deals expire after the 2022-23 season.
Davidson is probably aware of the argument to let Reichel’s contract slide a year. That would have delayed Reichel’s cap hit from increasing until the 2025-26 season. Reichel would remain with a $925,000 cap hit for the 2022-23, 2023-24 and 2024-25 seasons. With that set cap number, Davidson could have potentially used the couple million he was saving on Reichel to take on another team’s unfavorable contract in exchange for assets, which Davidson is prioritizing in the rebuild. There’s an assumption around the NHL that the salary cap’s ceiling will remain around $84.5 million until it starts to take off again during the 2025-26 season. That would make cap space even more valuable before that.
It’s worth noting that Reichel’s agent, Allain Roy, is also Brandon Hagel’s agent. The Blackhawks went through a long negotiation with Roy last offseason and worked him down to a very team-friendly contract for Hagel. Davidson was heavily involved in the negotiations and was able to sell Roy on a three-year deal with a $1.5 million cap hit (the original ask was closer to $3 million) because of Hagel’s inexperience, small sample size and lack of arbitration rights. Agents tend to have long memories about these sorts of things. Maybe Roy plays the next negotiations tougher? Reichel will likely have more leverage than Hagel because he’s expected to be a top-six forward, could have two 82-game seasons under his belt and, though unlikely, could be given an offer sheet by another team.
What does history say about the decision to burn or slide a contract? You can look through Cap Friendly’s list of slide candidates from over the years. There are plenty of examples for all sides of the argument.
Those examples include players who burned or slid that first season and still cost their team plenty on their second contacts based on their productions in the second and third years of their entry-level deal. If Reichel is a legit offensive star, he’s going to get paid either way.
And Davidson will likely be happy to pay him. At the end of the day, Davidson wants to do what’s best for the Blackhawks to be Stanley Cup contenders again. If Reichel can help the Blackhawks get to the other side of a rebuild, he’s worth every cent in his future contracts. Davidson gets that.
(Photo: Melissa Tamez / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
