Armchair Hockey Scout Beta

This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

76

Lukas Reichel

Chicago Blackhawks Left Wing

A first-round pick, 170 pounds, and a chance share in the 2nd percentile in his third season.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2021-22CHI11011-80000150.013:12
2022-23CHI237815-860004216.716:22
2023-24CHI6551116-2912200845.914:07
2024-25 so far
Career99122032-45182001418.514:32

This Season So Far

The 2024-25 season has not started. The empty row above is his, and both it and this paragraph fill in on their own from the morning after he first plays: what he has done, what it is worth against his own last season, and the run he is on when the two disagree.

Last Season

Sixty-five games, 5 goals and 11 assists, 2 on the power play, 14:07 a night and minus-29. He took 39.2 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 795 minutes, the 2nd percentile, and his ice went 29-46 against an expectation of 26.28-40.70.

The goals were actually better than the chances in both directions, which is the only kind thing to say about it. Sixteen points from the seventeenth pick of the 2020 draft in his third season is not enough, and he is 22.

The Finesse Game

The skating is real and it is the reason he is still here. He is quick through the neutral zone and can carry a puck in against a retreating defenceman.

Eighty-four shots at a median of 26 feet with 39 per cent from inside 20, converted at 5.95 per cent. Five goals on that profile is a finishing problem rather than a chance problem, and 12 goals in 99 career games says it has not yet been solved. Eleven assists is a thin return for a player whose junior reputation was for creating.

The Physical Game

He is 170 pounds and it decides everything. He is moved off the puck by anybody who wants to move him and he cannot hold a wall long enough for a change.

Twelve penalty minutes in 65 games. There is nothing hostile in his game at all, and against a heavy forecheck he disappears from a shift entirely.

The Intangibles

Seventeenth overall in 2020 out of Nuremberg, with three partial seasons and a career minus-45 in 99 games. The club has given him every opportunity a rebuilding roster can give and he has not taken it.

He is 22 and the skating buys him another season. It is not obvious what the second thing is.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 795 minutes

Expected goals
39.2%
2nd pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
41.3%
3rd pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 29 for, 46 against. Expected: 26.3 and 40.7.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
1st
Numbers
2nd

The two rank him within 1 points of one another. It was written for a back edition, with the seasons that followed already known. Neither the agreement nor the gap says anything about the eye, and this report is excluded from the club-level comparison for the same reason.

Both bars are percentiles among the 201 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 48 on their own scale — against every other report's mean. The numbers bar ranks his share of expected goals. A gap is a disagreement about where he belongs, not two scales talking past each other.

Usual linemates

2023-24 · 795 minutes at five-on-five

Share of his five-on-five ice time spent alongside each player, measured from shift charts. Special teams are excluded: a power-play unit is not a line.

Why the numbers land there

Five-on-five, 2023-24

The club
CHI took 41.9% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 39.2% — 2.7 below the club he did it on.
The role
Second line, 795 minutes at five-on-five — 38th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Kevin Korchinski39.0%39.4%41.3%
MacKenzie Entwistle34.1%41.6%45.0%
Andreas Athanasiou40.4%38.8%36.9%

39.0% together, 39.4% for him apart and 41.3% for Korchinski apart. Splitting them up moved neither man. Whatever is driving the share, it is not this pairing.

Expected-goal share while both were on the ice, and for each man in the minutes he played without the other. Apart is the pair subtracted from his own totals. It does not settle who was carrying whom — apart from each other, both were still playing with somebody — but it does say whether the share travelled when the pairing broke up.

Where he shoots from

goal on goal missed

101 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 5 of them goals. His median goal came from 9 feet. 39% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 23% from beyond forty.