CHICAGO — Luke Richardson looks like he just stepped out of an animated Batman series, with a jaw so square and sturdy you could use it as a blacksmith’s anvil. This Easter Island statue is 6-foot-4 and 210-pounds. The man responsible for forcing people out of his way for more than two decades, Richardson, is the real deal. NHL — with his shoulders, with his fists, into the boards, into the ice. Hockey FightsRichardson has 125 official bouts to his credit, and at 53, he still looks like the guy who could beat half the whippersnappers.
This is not a man who’s used to backing down. You can do anything.
Yes, he does understand the situation. BlackhawksYou are now. He grasps the value of what general manager Kyle Davidson is doing by setting the team up to secure the best pick possible in next summer’s tantalizing draft. He’s no dummy.
But he’s not here to help. He’s not here to be the Tank Commander.
“I told Kyle right off the hop that we’re going to make his job the toughest possible, and try to win as much as possible,” Richardson said Wednesday on the eve of training camp.
At this point, Davidson, half the size but holding nearly all the power, jumped in with a smile and said, “Having said that, I want to win. I want to win.”
The bosses. pic.twitter.com/zvmSS3yl4w
— Mark Lazerus (@MarkLazerus) September 21, 2022
He does. Truly. Richardson, however, wants to win right away. Davidson wants to win later — or, more fairly, wants to do all he can to set the team up for success later, a painful process that includes sacrificing this season and possibly more beyond it. It’s a wild bit of cognitive dissonance that neither side seems troubled by. This is a bizarre situation Richardson finds himself in as a head coach for the first time in the NHL.
Richardson is the most pressured coach in the league, but Richardson has the toughest job.
All Richardson has to do this season is develop a bevy of young but fringe NHL talent; foster a nurturing, positive environment amid what’s sure to be a soul-sucking slog of a season; keep championship-era holdovers Patrick Kane Jonathan Toews on board, upbeat and bought in as long as they’re on the team and then adapt to their inevitable departures; grind that jaw and bear it when players that clearly could help him immediately are kept in Rockford by organizational prerogative to spare them from the horrors of a last-place campaign; and adapt to the rigors and responsibilities of being in charge for the first time at the NHL level.
Oh, and all while keeping a team designed to lose competitive and fun — just good enough to lose 5-4, you know? — so that the Blackhawks can keep selling tickets, a very real directive from the Blackhawks brass.
Good luck Coach!
Richardson, naturally, doesn’t see himself at odds with Davidson. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t want to do to Davidson what he did to countless forwards in his 21 NHL seasons — take control.
“They smiled and nodded,” Richardson said when recalling his first meeting with Davidson and his staff. “It’s always been in my nature to be competitive. To win in this league and to have a chance to work with an Original Six team, it’s not more pressure. It’s just more determination to get it where it should be, and that’s at the top. There’s really no timetable. It might take some time, but I’m an optimist and I think we can cut that time and make it go quicker. And if we do, that’s great. And (then) I think everybody (will be) happy because we’re going in the right direction. Just might be a little step ahead than we thought.”
This is everything you want to hear if you’re a Blackhawks fan. The front office has a plan, and the coach wants to win.
But it’s easy to say all of this stuff and paint a rosy picture in September. Richardson: How will he respond when the Blackhawks put an egg and are beaten 5-0 at their home? The first time there’s a four-game losing streak — or five, or six, or seven, or 10? The first time that the effort rate is as low as the talent level. Richardson said team morale will be a huge focal point for him, and that it can hinge on the leadership group, guys who are “driven to win all the time” and “bring you into the fight with them.” He mentioned Wendel Clark as one of those heart-and-soul guys, and told a story about longtime OilersKevin Lowe was a defenseman that has remained with him.
“I remember walking down the hall and I happened to be right behind him,” Richardson said. “We lost to San Jose, which was in their first year in the league, and with the success that (Lowe) had with the Oilers in the early ‘80s, that’s just a no-no. He tore down the entire roof of the hallway. It was like, a light was hanging and there was dust and I didn’t know where I was going. It was a wake-up call as a young player.”
However, there are limits to how many times that a Toews, Kane or Richardson can pull off a stunt such as this. The expansion actually cost the 1991-92 Oilers their season. SharksThey won three times, but they also reached the conference final where they were swept away by the Blackhawks. They were a strong team and a very competitive team. Those Oilers had expectations. These Blackhawks do not. Is it possible to have a standard but not have expectations? It’ll be up to Richardson to thread that needle.
For his part, Davidson said that great “effort and attitude” is what the Blackhawks can control, and that’s therefore what the expectation is. He also refuted the notion that he wants the Blackhawks to lose this season (everyone knows he does, of course, but it’s not as if he’s giddy about it; it’s a means to an end, is all).
“You walk into that room, and every game matters,” Davidson said. “These guys are competitors. We’re all competitors. You don’t get into this industry if you don’t want to win every night. From my perspective … we are thinking long-term in many respects. But that doesn’t change the fact that when you walk into the rink, when you walk into the United Center, you want the Blackhawks to win. And that doesn’t change.”
So that’s all Richardson has to do. Try to win, but don’t win. You should be competitive but not too competitive. Toews should be happy and Kane not. Keep young talent in Rockford, but develop it. Establish yourself as you start your NHL coaching career, but let’s not get carried away here, OK?
Now, don’t feel too badly for Richardson. He has a four-year contract (typically, first-time coaches get three years, maybe even two) and a clear direction from management, an outright acknowledgment that this season, wins truly don’t matter. This level of job security is almost impossible to find in the NHL, where coaching jobs are as temporary as Chicago autumns.
But don’t mistake ease of pressure with an easy task. And don’t expect Richardson to back down from the fight. There’s no complacency in that jaw line.
“Everybody’s excited to be here,” Richardson said. “Why wouldn’t you be in Chicago with the Blackhawks?”
(Photo of Luke Richardson by David Banks / USA Today
