The league-worst Chicago Blackhawks fired coach Luke Richardson on Thursday after three seasons.
Anders Sorensen, coach of the AHL Rockford IceHogs, was named interim head coach and will assume duties immediately. The Blackhawks have also made Mark Eaton, their assistant general manager overseeing player development, the interim coach in Rockford.
Sources told ESPN’s Emily Kaplan that Sorensen will coach the rest of the season and will be given an opportunity to get the full-time job, as the Blackhawks think very highly of him. The Blackhawks plan on conducting a full coaching search after the season.
Players in Rockford have praised Sorensen as a coach, with one player telling ESPN that he’s a “great communicator and teacher.”
Richardson, 55, had a 57-118-15 record after being hired to coach Chicago in 2022, while the Blackhawks were in a prolonged rebuild. He was in the last year of a three-year contract, with Chicago holding an option for a fourth season.
After 26 games this season, Chicago had a record of 8-16-2, the worst in the NHL. The Blackhawks were tied for 21st in team defense (3.15 goals against per game) and the second-worst offensive team in the league at 2.42 goals per game. Those offensive struggles impacted Connor Bedard, last season’s Rookie of the Year, who has just five goals in 26 games this season.
“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,” Blackhawks general manager Kyle Davidson said. “We wish Luke and his family all the best moving forward.”
Blackhawks chairman and CEO Danny Wirtz said he fully supports Davidson’s decision and endorsed the management team’s search for the team’s next head coach.
The frustration this season has been notable within the Blackhawks, in particular with the 19-year-old Bedard. The No. 1 pick in the 2023 NHL draft — and marketed as a franchise savior in Chicago — Bedard had grown tired of finding silver linings in losses for a last-place club.
“We’re not just going to be happy that we stayed in a game. We’re all NHL players. That’s not the goal, you know? It’s frustrating,” he said in November. “Losing is not fun, so we’ve obviously got to figure it out.”
Two weeks ago, Bedard said there were “100 things” he felt he could change about his game as he was mired in a 12-game streak without a goal.
Richardson was criticized for scrambling his lines too often in search of the right mix. He raised some eyebrows around the NHL when he shifted Bedard, a natural center, to the wing and played him in more of a defensive role with forwards Jason Dickinson and Joey Anderson.
“We didn’t bring him here to be a checker,” Richardson said. “But just the way our team has a lack of scoring, we’re hunkering down on the defensive side until we get a little more confidence offensively back.”
Bedard, who was left off of Team Canada’s 4 Nations Face-Off roster this week, has four points in his past seven games.
Richardson also took criticism for the way he handled the benching of veteran Taylor Hall, a former league MVP now in his 15th NHL season. Hall was surprised by becoming a healthy scratch because the possibility of it hadn’t been communicated to him.
Richardson later admitted that Hall should have been given a heads-up.
“That could be part of my problem, too. Sometimes you give veterans a little bit more of a grace period,” Richardson said.
Richardson was hired in June 2022, replacing interim coach Derek King. He had been an assistant coach for the Montreal Canadiens and spent four seasons as head coach of the Ottawa Senators‘ AHL affiliate.
Sorensen is the fourth head coach under Davidson, two of them serving on an interim basis. He has amassed a 117-89-16-7 record in 229 career AHL games serving as head coach. The IceHogs have reached the playoffs in each of his three seasons serving as bench boss.
Previously, Sorensen was a development coach in Chicago and a bench coach for Södertälje SK of HockeyAllsvenskan in Sweden.
The Blackhawks have several of their top prospects, including Frank Nazar, Kevin Korchinski and Artem Levshyunov, playing in Rockford this season. They have been hesitant to call them up, preferring them to be better prepared in the AHL. However Nazar, who is second in AHL scoring with 24 points in 18 games, is expected to get a call up this season. The Blackhawks would prefer to keep Nazar in the NHL instead of shuttling him back and forth.
This is the third coaching change of the 2024-25 NHL season.
The Boston Bruins fired Jim Montgomery on Nov. 19, replacing him with interim coach Joe Sacco. When Montgomery became available, the St. Louis Blues fired Drew Bannister and hired Montgomery five days after his dismissal in Boston.
