Blackhawks plan to hold young players in AHL until they're ready to 'thrive' in NHL

Blackhawks general manager Kyle Davidson made the message clear to Kevin Korchinski.

"He’s a guy who has to come in and earn a spot," Davidson said Friday.

That's essentially the message to all the Hawks' young players right now. They'll have to definitively prove they're NHL-ready rather than simply seem NHL-ready. With so much more quantity and quality on the NHL roster next season, spots won't be cleared for them preemptively.

"Young guys will have to be convincing in doing so," Davidson added. "What we don’t want is to give them a spot and then, after a month or so, it’s just not working out and we had to clear someone out to clear a spot for them and then we can’t get that player back. We want to be sure they're going to come in, elevate the whole group through their play and be able to sustain that."

That was the biggest takeaway from the GM's news conference after a busy week. He hopes the influx of talent created by signing seven veteran free agents will help the Hawks be able to "play with the puck more and control the game more" next season than they have during the past two loss-laden seasons.

He specifically mentioned the Stars' ultra-patient approach to their youth movement. Stars GM Jim Nill kept prospect defenseman Thomas Harley, a 2019 first-round pick, in the AHL for the majority of three years, then unleashed him in the NHL last season and saw him immediately become a first-pairing staple.

Nill also kept prospect forward Logan Stankoven, a 2021 first-round pick, in junior hockey for two years and in the AHL for half a year, then called him up in February and watched him excel down the stretch. Those are two recipes Davidson hopes to emulate.

"If young players are ready to come in and elevate the group more so than a player who’s in a spot, then we’ll make the decision on how to best find a role for them," he said. "But what we couldn’t do is what I believe happened a little last year — where we had spots for young players and then maybe they’re ready, maybe they were not quite thriving.

"It's a tough league for young guys to thrive in, and we want our players to thrive. The one thing we’ve got at our disposal is Rockford. I don’t know if we’ve had a player that’s gone down and come back up that hasn’t gotten better in Rockford."

Beyond the prospect-development aspect, Davidson also wants to avoid any more crises similar to January, when a plague of injuries decimated their already limited depth. That necessitated what Davidson admitted were some "desperation trades or waiver claims" and forced the coaching staff to elevate some players into roles they weren't qualified for.

This season, he believes most forwards on the NHL roster will "have a niche and a clear identity" as either a top-six or bottom-six player. On that note, he expects everyone on NHL contracts to be ready for training camp in September; nobody quietly underwent any surgeries this summer.

Those Harley and Stankoven examples could — and probably were meant to — be eye-opening for guys like Korchinski, Wyatt Kaiser, Ethan Del Mastro, Nolan Allan, Lukas Reichel, Frank Nazar, Landon Slaggert and Colton Dach, all of whom have accumulated at least one year of pro experience and might have otherwise expected to have spots left open for them.

"You want [prospects] to be challenged, you want them to be pushed, but you also don't want them just to be treading water or even slightly better than that," Davidson said. "We're not going to put players in the NHL just to say, 'We have young players in the NHL.' It's got to be the right thing to do."