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 is a 6-foot-4, 210-pound Easter Island statue come to life, a man who spent more than two decades forcibly moving people out of his way in the NHL — with his shoulders, with his fists, into the boards. into the ice. Hockey Fights credits Richardson with 125 official bouts in his career, and at 53 years old, he still looks like he could beat up at least half the whippersnappers in the league right now.
This is not a man who is used to backing down. From anything.
So yes, he understands the situation the Blackhawks are in. 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
Of course, he does. Truly. But Richardson wants to win now. 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. But it underscores the bizarre situation in which Richardson finds himself as a first-time NHL head coach:
No coach in the league faces less pressure than Richardson does, but no coach in the league has a harder 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 and 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 no 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 faster. 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. You have a front office with a clear plan for the first time in years, and you have a coach who wants to win and do everything he can to speed up a painful process.
But it’s easy to say all of this stuff and paint a rosy picture in September. How will Richardson respond the first time the Blackhawks lay an egg and get thumped 5-0 at home? The first time there’s a four-game losing streak — or five, or six, or seven, or 10? The first time the effort rates 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 Oilers defenseman Kevin Lowe that stuck 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 the entire roof out 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.”
But there are only so many times a Toews or a Kane or even a Richardson can pull a stunt like that. Those 1991-92 Oilers actually lost to the expansion Sharks three times, but they were a team that also made a run to the conference final (where they were swept by the Blackhawks). It was a good team, a competitive team. Those Oilers had expectations. These Blackhawks do not. Can you have a standard without having 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. And he pushed back a bit at the idea 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. Be competitive, but not too competitive. Keep Toews and Kane happy, but not too happy. Develop young talent, but stash most of it in Rockford. Establish yourself as you start your NHL coaching career, but let’s not get carried away here, OK?
Now, don’t feel too bad 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. In the pressure cooker that is the NHL, where coaching gigs are as fleeting as a Chicago autumn, this is an almost unheard-of level of job security.
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: David Banks / USA Today)
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