The Chicago Blackhawks named their next head coach a little over a week ago when they announced Luke Richardson as the coach of the franchise. Richardson previously served as an assistant coach of the Montreal Canadiens.
The Blackhawks are entering a really tough long rebuild as they fired their former general manager and coach this past season in Stan Bowman and Jeremy Colliton. The Hawks named Kyle Davidson their general manager late last season after he served as interim GM. The big first move Davidson did as coach is name Luke Richardson his first head coach in the NHL.
Naming Richardson coach has been a move that some notable alums of the team have liked.
Andrew Shaw played for Richardson when they were both with the Montreal Canadiens during the 2018-19 season. Shaw had this to say about the team naming Richardson their coach.
“From what I saw, our PK got better and I thought our defenseman, they played that strong, hard-nosed, hard-to-play-against style of hockey,” Shaw said. “He taught the young kids coming in how to how to defend and I thought that was huge for some of the younger defensemen coming in to be able to have a coach who’s played 1,400 plus games in the NHL, coached a bunch as well.”
Shaw spoke at length on the decision to name Richardson coach and you can check out the full article here.
Richardson has spent time as an assistant coach in New York and was also a head coach in the AHL for a few seasons. This is his first opportunity at the NHL level as a head coach but he does have a lot of experience playing in the league as he spent 21 years in the league as a defenseman.
Luke Richardson is the 40th head coach in the history of the Blackhawks organization.
Now comes the hard part.
The Blackhawks are now entering their rebuild for real. They have their general manager and coach who are going to be leading the way through this next phase of the team, but in doing so they are going to say goodbye to a lot of players.
It has already been noted that no one is really safe for this rebuild. While the big three players of Jonathan Toews, Patrick Kane and Seth Jones are going to be basically not tradeable up to this point, if they wanted to get out the Hawks would try and get something done.
This offseason is most likely going to see the Hawks say goodbye to a lot of fan favorites potentially Alex DeBrincat and maybe even Connor Murphy, two of the team’s assistant captains this past season.
Chicago also could potentially be signing some of their players only to deal them next year in guys like Dylan Strome and Dominik Kubalik. All in all, this is where the real hard work begins for Kyle Davidson with his staff now in place.
I hope fans are ready because the next few months are going to include a lot of change for the Blackhawks.