3 reasons it is hard to be patient with the Chicago Blackhawks' rebuild

Head coach Luke Richardson is not giving the young players he has up with the team enough runway.

There is a difference between holding players accountable, rewarding players for strong play, and then just tinkering for the sake of tinkering. It is something Richardson still must figure out.

Scratching Philipp Kurashev for a poor night might have been the equivalent of taking a flamethrower to kill an ant hill.

Lukas Reichel has shown he can play well on the fourth line. It has been enough to see if he can still reach his ceiling of being an elite top-line player. Instead, he was given a night on the top line and then sent back to the bottom line.

It would be nice to see Richardson give Reichel a month to get enough data to know if he is nothing more than a fourth-line player.

Ryan Donato is off to a great start, but he is 29 and might not be with the team after this season. Yet, he is getting bumped up to the first line. He has earned more ice time, but it is coming at the expense of not getting enough data on seeing if Reichel is finally starting to get it.

Also, this shuffling of lines feels like he is doing it as just a response to any defeat. Sometime commitment might be better than bailing.

That is why you have to be concerned if Richardson is the coach capable of taking the Blackhawks not only from rock bottom to competitive but also from competitive to playoff winner.

However, the expectations may have been raised; he is still not being asked to take the team to the playoffs. This team is far from a finished product either.

It just would be nice to see his line shuffling look less like a reaction to a defeat and more like finding the right combinations and giving the youth some runway to see if they can thrive.