When the Chicago Blackhawks hired former Ottawa Senator Luke Richardson to coach their rebuilding team in 2022, they didn’t expect him to deliver a Stanley Cup right away. But they also didn’t imagine they’d still be dead last in the NHL a third of the way through Richardson’s third season.
Today, Chicago GM Kyle Davidson relieved his fellow Ottawan of his head coaching duties.
“Today, I made the difficult decision to move on from Luke as our head coach,” Davidson said in a club press release. “We thank him for his efforts and contributions to the organization and our community. As we have begun to take steps forward in our rebuilding process, we felt that the results did not match our expectations for a higher level of execution this season and ultimately came to the decision that a change was necessary. We wish Luke and his family all the best moving forward.”
Richardson is generally regarded as one of the best people in the game, one of the most thoughtful I’ve come across, but every coach is judged on his record, and there just weren’t enough signs of improvement in Chicago.
Image credit: Hockeyreference.com
Meanwhile, Davidson has not only gone with a rookie NHL head coach again, he also went down a road rarely travelled, promoting a coach who hails from outside North America. Rockford IceHogs head coach Anders Sorensen has been named interim head coach and believed to be the first Swedish coach to run an NHL bench.
Richardson spent two seasons with the Senators as a player, three as an assistant coach, and four as a head coach of Ottawa’s AHL team in Binghamton. There will be no shortage of Sens fans who’d like to see him lend a hand with the defence in Ottawa someday.
