Kyle Davidson's expectations for Blackhawks now include execution, not just hard work

SALT LAKE CITY — Typically patient and affable, Blackhawks general manager Kyle Davidson seemed to be fighting to contain annoyance Tuesday when the subject of forward Lukas Reichel came up.

“He’s got to show and play a certain way,” Davidson said. “[He needs to] have the habit that, if it’s in practice, he shows he deserves to be in the lineup, and if he’s in the lineup, he plays a certain way that we expect [so] that he’ll hold a spot. It’s in his hands.”

Davidson surely has been frustrated for a while now by Reichel, a 2020 first-round pick who has struggled to reach his lofty ceiling. Davidson gave him a two-year contract even after his disappointing play last season, hoping he could get his career back on track with a summer of mental rejuvenation and physical training. But Reichel is already off to another rough start. He struggled during the preseason and failed to make the opening-night lineup, sitting out Tuesday against Utah as a healthy scratch.

“He’s got to work and get to the point where, if an opportunity opens up, he’s going to jump in and take advantage of it,” Davidson said.

The Hawks’ insistence that Reichel won’t get a roster spot unless he shows he deserves one is a different approach from last year, when he was handed the second-line center role right away, then gradually slipped down the depth chart because of poor performance. The divergence is partly because the Hawks don’t want to use the NHL as a developmental tool as much as they have in the past, preferring to concentrate their efforts almost entirely in Rockford, where this season’s lineup will be loaded with notable prospects, including defenseman Kevin Korchinski, center Frank Nazar and eventually defenseman Artyom Levshunov.

But it’s also partly because the Hawks will be demanding not just hard work and competitiveness from this year’s NHL crew — their main emphases the last two years, when they had one of the worst lineups in the league — but also some semblance of execution.

“It’s not just trying,” coach Luke Richardson said. “Everybody’s trying, hopefully. It’s the best league in the world, [so] you have to have execution or someone else is going to . . . have that chance to do it.”

Said Davidson: “We talk a lot about how we want the team to compete, but that’s a baseline, right? That needs to happen. Then [I] would like to see further execution, and hopefully just more wins and more productivity with the puck.”

In terms of talent, the Hawks still lag behind most NHL teams. There’s a reason sportsbooks project them to have the fourth-lowest point total, ahead of only the Sharks, Ducks and Blue Jackets.

And there’s a reason Davidson gave a non-answer when asked Tuesday if he expected the Hawks to be in the playoff race.

“Hopefully we’re a team that overperforms . . . [from what] the public discourse has been,” he said.

The Hawks, however, are actually flush with experience — at least for now, during an odd interim season between the tanking years and the upcoming youth-takeover years. They have plenty of veterans who should know well how to follow and carry out a game plan, even if they don’t have the speed or skill to keep up with other teams’ stars.

That explains the new focus on execution. And younger players such as Reichel, Kor-chinski and Nazar will have to demonstrate they can match it before they usurp any veterans. That’s not meant to be a roadblock — Davidson plans for the younger players to push out the vets eventually. But the bar to do so has been raised.