Chicago Blackhawks general manager Stan Bowman presented a challenge to his front-office staff, including his scouts. Because of the team's unique salary structure, including two superstars counting for a salary cap charge of $10.5 million each per season, they needed to discover players who could contribute on the cheap.

He outlined the prerequisites for players joining the Blackhawks -- individuals who might mesh well with guys like Jonathan Toews, Patrick Kane and Marian Hossa.

They had to be able to think the game quickly enough to contribute. In Toews and Kane, the Blackhawks have two stars who are high-end skill guys. But they’re also a step or two ahead of everyone else. It does no good to plug a guy into the roster who can’t think the game at a high level.

They also had to be able to skate well. Speed is everything in today’s game. Oh, yeah: They also can’t make much money.

Right now, because of the top-heavy contracts on the Blackhawks' roster, Chicago has 14 players earning under $1 million.

“If it’s not the highest [in the league], it’s in the top two or three,” Bowman said.

Bowman told his staff that they had to look at players through a different lens. If the player was red hot, they probably wouldn’t be able to get him. Instead, he asked for them to evaluate players with a dose of optimism. What would this player look like if it all came together? And if they were surrounded by Blackhawks talent?

Last season, Ryan Stewart, the Blackhawks' director of pro scouting, came to Bowman with an idea.

After scoring just 11 goals in 76 games with the Maple Leafs in 2014-15, Richard Panik was stuck in the AHL with the Toronto Marlies. His production there wasn’t bad -- 25 points in 33 games -- but his NHL aspirations were treading water. He was 24 years old and looking like a player perhaps finding his proper level.

But Stewart saw a guy who fit all the prerequisites that the Blackhawks outline. Plus, he even had a little bit of size, an attribute Chicago is usually willing to punt in favor of skill.

"[Stewart] said, 'We have Jeremy [Morin]. Maybe they might be looking for a change of scenery,'" Bowman said.

The deal was made in January: Morin for Panik, straight-up.

“Here we are, nine months later, and he’s had a nice start for us," Bowman said. "We do need guys like that to contribute.”

Panik’s early-season success is just the latest example of the Blackhawks taking a non-traditional route to filling in the roster around their stars. Bowman liked what he saw from Panik down the stretch last season, and he thought he played well in the playoffs. This season, Panik has four goals in four games to start the campaign. Consistency has always been the issue for him, so it’s a little early to declare a success, but the early returns are strong.

Chicago needs them to be. In a cap system, teams are always going to have an area of need, especially a team paying its stars as much as the Blackhawks do. In Chicago, that area is at forward. The Blackhawks don’t have the depth they once did at forward, and it’s going to take creativity from Bowman and his staff to pull it off.

But other teams with young stars should watch closely to see how the Blackhawks handle it, because this is where they’re headed.

The Blackhawks had the fortune of winning a Stanley Cup with Toews and Kane on their entry-level deals in 2010. That’s almost the easy part. Now comes the challenge of winning one when contracts for Kane and Toews are maxed out. This is year No. 2 of that experience, and it hasn’t happened yet. But if you have good, young superstars, this is where you’re headed.

Toronto with Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner, Edmonton with Connor McDavid and maybe Leon Draisaitl -- it might be a good idea to take some notes.

“If you look at the teams that have had success, they all have the same structure we do,” Bowman said. “The other teams are headed this way. What do you think the Maple Leafs are going to look like in three years? There’s no other way to do it.”

Well, there is.

You could, in theory, pick just one of the superstars. There are definitely executives in the NHL who truly wonder if a team can win a championship with two players making over $10 million per year during a time in which the salary cap has stagnated.

When the Blackhawks signed their stars, the cap had consistently gone up fairly significantly every year. The deals were actually looked at as discounts for the Blackhawks, considering either of those players would have gotten $12 million per season on the open market. In fact, the negotiation between the Blackhawks and those two stars started with an initial ask of over $12 million per season until it was negotiated down.

It’s just that internal projections for where the cap was headed haven’t materialized. It raises the question: Has Bowman ever considered picking just one of his superstars and moving the other to make roster construction just a little bit easier?

He thought a moment.

“No. It’s so hard to get one of them,” he said. “If you had to make a choice to trade Toews or Kane, I don’t know how you choose.”

I’d keep the center. But anyways ...

“Even if you make your choice, what are you going to get back? Hopefully young players that turn into good players and you’re going to be in the same position down the road,” Bowman said. “There’s no mechanism in the system to account for this situation. If a team had three superstar players, let’s say the Leafs had gotten McDavid, Matthews and someone else, they can only have them for a few years. That’s it. There’s no mechanism.”

On some level, that’s the decision Bowman faces next. Artemi Panarin was another great find for him and his staff, allowing them to plug in a top-line player on the cheap. That won’t last. He’s got one year left on a deal that pays him $812,500 (!) this season, before hitting restricted free agency next summer.

Bowman’s strategy has been to identify his core, pay those players and then surround them with the most cost-effective guys possible. Panarin adds another player to the core, one that throws that system out of whack. He can’t afford them all, no matter how many sub-million dollar players the Blackhawks discover.

“Something is going to have to give. ... Hopefully the cap starts to creep up and gives us more flexibility. We have expansion happening, we’re going to lose a player there,” Bowman said. “I don’t have the answer. When another player comes into the mix, the cap has to allow you to have another player or someone has to move out. ... When we get to that point, which might be next summer or 18 months from now, we’ll make the call. We don’t need to make that call now.”

Until then, they just keep looking for diamonds in the rough. They mine the college free agents, a path that landed them Trevor van Riemsdyk. They scout the KHL closely, a strategy that brought Panarin and talented defenseman Michal Kempny. They look for smart trades with an eye on the future, like the one that brought Gustav Forsling -- “He’s really good,” Bowman said -- over from Vancouver in return for Adam Clendening.

They kick the tires on a talented young player with upside like Nail Yakupov when he becomes available, like Bowman did in conversations with Edmonton, conversations that Bowman points out happen all the time with a number of teams.

“It’s an ongoing process,” he said.

With the way the Blackhawks salary is structured, it has to be.