All right, let’s get these out of the way early: Yes, I think there’s a chance Kevin Korchinski sees time in Rockford this season. No, I don’t think it’ll be a crisis. Yes, I think Frank Nazar can force the issue and earn a spot out of camp, but he’ll have to have one heck of a preseason to do so. Yes, I would have drafted Ivan Demidov at No. 2 because Connor Bedard needs a running buddy for the next 15 years, but I see the appeal in potentially having a top four of Artyom Levshunov, Seth Jones, Alex Vlasic and Korchinski. No, I have absolutely no idea what to expect from the careers of Sacha Boisvert and Marek Vanacker, or if general manager Kyle Davidson wasted a second-round pick to move up from No. 20 to No. 18 a month ahead of the draft, or if Cole Eiserman would have been a better pick at No. 18, and anyone who tells you they do is talking out of their hockey pants.

There. It’s late July. Let’s save the more granular Blackhawks discussions for training camp. Let’s find some more interesting things to talk about in Part 1 of my summer mailbag.

When it comes to the upcoming season, is it OK to cheer for a playoff spot again, or are we still secretly cheering for a high draft pick? I’m excited to see the new and improved roster play, but I still feel like we need one more star player to complete the rebuild. — Mark K.

I totally understand this question. I also hate this question. This is why I railed against the Blackhawks’ naked tank job two years ago, and this is why I still think it was gross even though it (so far) has worked. No fan should ever be put in the position to root against their own team. Not for an entire season. Certainly not for three consecutive seasons or more. Not when they’re shelling out hundreds of dollars for tickets, hundreds of dollars for jerseys, $24 for parking, $16 for a beer, $11 for a Polish sausage, and whatever the latest carriage cost is for broadcasts. Not when they’re trying to instill a passion and a fandom in their kids. Not when the entire point of sports is competition.

When the puck drops, you should always want your team to win. Always. You can do that and still keep the big picture in mind. Remember: The Blackhawks didn’t actually tank successfully. Had they done so, they wouldn’t have Connor Bedard. So let Kyle Davidson sweat the future. When you’re at the United Center or watching a game on TV, live in the moment. Otherwise, what’s the point?

Is it harder covering a team that’s a consistent winner like the Hawks used to be, or a rebuilding team that is expecting to lose? — Sam Pioppo

Sam asked me this question way back in February, and I promised I’d get to it in a mailbag eventually. Forgive me for taking so long. But it’s a great question.

Sportswriters get asked all the time if it’s better to cover a good team or a bad team. That’s easy: It’s better to cover a good team because more people will be reading your work. Full stop. Bandwagons are good for business. I don’t have any emotional connection to the Blackhawks — I’m singing along to SiriusXM’s Lithium on my drive home just as happily whether they win or lose on a given night. But like every writer, I’m a raging egomaniac and I want to draw as many eyeballs as possible.

But which is harder? That’s tricky.

When the Blackhawks were on top of the hockey world my first few years on the beat (I started with the lockout season in 2013), it was always easy to write fun features. The team was almost always in a good mood, the time was always right for off-beat questions, and fans would read anything you wrote about their beloved team. But the games didn’t mean squat. The Blackhawks didn’t really care about their seeding and they (later) openly admitted to being on cruise control for most of those regular seasons. You couldn’t write about the games because they didn’t mean anything. You couldn’t gin up any melodrama about the power play because they already had proven they could win the Stanley Cup without one. The roster barely changed month to month, year to year, so you’d already written about every player dozens of times. And there are few intriguing prospects to write about to break up the monotony of the season. Story ideas were few and far between.

Now that they’ve been terrible, it’s hard to write fun features. Postgame locker rooms are morgues and nobody wants to be goofy and fun during an eight-game losing streak. You can’t write about the games because they don’t mean anything. You can’t gin up any melodrama about the power play because who cares? The roster changes so wildly month to month, year to year, that fans aren’t emotionally attached to — and don’t care to read about — any of these stopgap veterans who are just passing through. And you can go to the prospect well only so many times. Story ideas are few and far between.

Twelve seasons into this job, I’ve never covered a team that’s just kind of OK, that’s truly fighting for a playoff spot. A team for which every game feels like life or death, every lineup change leads to hysterical debate, every power play is a referendum, and every loss leads to an existential crisis about the state of the franchise. That seems fun. Mediocrity might be the enemy for front offices, but it sure seems pretty good for writers.

(Don’t tell Michael Russo I said this, by the way. He’d probably throw a hot Starbucks in my face.)

Nick Foligno has very clearly become the de facto captain of this team. Why not make it official? — Andrew L.

I expect this to happen at the start of training camp. It’s a no-brainer to give Foligno the “C” to buy Bedard a couple of years before he shoulders that burden/honor. It was a no-brainer last year, frankly, but the Blackhawks were careful (and probably wise) to be deferential to Jonathan Toews’ legacy by leaving the captaincy vacant for a year.

Has anyone pulled off a long-term, sustainable build by the draft play? I’m talking trading for first- and second-round picks several years out and having three to five first- and second-rounders every year. Only 50 percent of them work out anyway. Seems like GMs transition to trading those assets but seems like an area for arbitrage. — BM

No team in the modern era has been as aggressive in terms of acquiring early-round draft picks as the Blackhawks have, so I’m not sure there’s a viable comparison. Chicago has made eight first-round picks in the past 25 months, which is absolutely wild. It’s the most in a three-year span since Montreal made 10 from 1974-76. The fact that Chicago also has made five second-round picks and eight third-rounders in that span is pretty staggering. As you suggested, most draft picks are just lottery tickets (50 percent seems awfully optimistic, to be honest), but the more tickets you have, the better your odds that one of them hits, right? And while the Florida Panthers built their team largely through aggressive trades and savvy reclamation projects, most elite teams have a core that was built through the draft.

Chicago drafted Toews, Patrick Kane, Duncan Keith, Niklas Hjalmarsson, Brent Seabrook and Corey Crawford, among many others. Pittsburgh drafted Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Kris Letang and Marc-André Fleury. Los Angeles drafted Anze Kopitar, Drew Doughty and Dustin Brown. Tampa Bay drafted Steven Stamkos, Victor Hedman, Brayden Point and Andrei Vasilevskiy. Colorado drafted Nathan MacKinnon, Mikko Rantanen, Gabriel Landeskog and Cale Makar.

A lot of those were top-10 picks. But some of them were second-rounders and third-rounders. They won’t all hit, but the more kicks at the can you have, the better your chances. That’s been Davidson’s philosophy from day one.

Do you expect the Hawks to be more aggressive in free agency next year, maybe even trading away important picks for players? — Lucy B.

The fact that Davidson was ready to trade next year’s unprotected top pick (almost certainly a top-10 pick) to Columbus for the ability to draft Demidov is as clear a sign as any that the Blackhawks are ready to stop living years in the future. Could they deal away future picks for players? It’s possible, but unlikely. Trades like that are rare, and it’s not as if they’ll be in the rental market at the trade deadline. But perhaps they look for this generation’s Brian Campbell and/or Marian Hossa next summer — the player who signals to both the team and its fans that it’s time to start taking the Blackhawks seriously again.

With Mitch Marner, Brock Boeser, Nikolaj Ehlers, John Tavares, Shea Theodore and Aaron Ekblad among the players slated for unrestricted free agency next summer, just as players such as Oliver Moore and Levshunov are ready to break into the NHL for good, things could get interesting very quickly.

Which player do you believe will have a breakout season? — Kyleigh H.

Call me crazy, but I think Lukas Reichel will bounce back from his sophomore slump in a big way. I see him having a 50-point season on the second line with Taylor Hall and either Andreas Athanasiou or Nazar.

Seriously asking, and just a yes or no would suffice. This goes to what journalists might know but can’t/won’t report. Do you and/or Scott know the actual details of Corey Perry’s transgression last fall? (To be clear, I’m not asking for the details, just if you ever learned what caused his dismissal from the team.) — Matthew S.

I’ve been asked “what really happened” by my poker buddies, my cardiologist and my own family. My response is always the same: We’ve reported what we can report. Do we know more than you do? Yes. But the bar to clear is very high when it comes to sensitive stories like this one. Until we have every detail of the story (not merely dribs and drabs), backed up and corroborated by sufficient sources, we won’t report any of them. And we may never.

A better question, one I really want to know: How much do the Edmonton Oilers know?

Just scratching the surface here. I’ll have Part 2 of the mailbag soon.

(Top photo of Nick Foligno and Connor Bedard: Bruce Bennett / Getty Images)