Evaluating Luke Richardson’s first two seasons as Blackhawks coach

PHILADELPHIA — Evaluating Luke Richardson’s first two years as Blackhawks coach entails one major challenge: he cannot be fairly assessed based on wins and losses.

That’s not the case with most coaches. Their all-time records are usually strong indicators of their effectiveness. Hurricanes boss Rod Brind’Amour, whose teams have won 61.2% of the games he has coached, is clearly a good coach, for example. Former Ducks boss Dallas Eakins, whose teams won 33.7% of the games he coached, is a nice guy but a bad coach.

Then there’s Richardson. Out of all 211 coaches in NHL history who have overseen at least 150 games, his 30.3% winning percentage ranks 200th. When narrowing the pool to men who coached a game within the last 30 years, he ranks 122nd out of 123. In other words, his record is historically awful.

But his record is also more or less what anyone looking at the Hawks’ long-term plans — when general manager Kyle Davidson hired Richardson in June 2022 — would have expected.

Most NHL coaches — even Brind’Amour — would likely have a similar record after nearly two seasons of coaching this designed-to-lose Hawks team. Richardson’s historically awful record reflects the rarity and extremity of the Hawks’ rebuild more than anything related to his own performance.

So how can his first two years be evaluated? One way to do so is by listening to Davidson, who knows precisely how talent-lacking the teams he has given Richardson are and therefore can judge him through the proper lens.

“A lot of what you’re looking at is, ‘[Is] that team showing up and competing every night?’” Davidson said March 8. “I think we can see that they are. It’s also tough to measure the mistakes we make — for probably multiple reasons — versus other teams. That’s taken into account, as well.

“Overall, I think the coaches have done a good job. It’s not easy being where we are in the standings and having that team continually show up, compete, have fun and want to play hard.”

Tactically, Richardson and his staff — who will work their 156th game together Saturday — haven’t been asked to do anything too inventive, although they did have their hands full after Connor Bedard’s injury in January.

Their efforts to tighten up the defense, hoping to win games 1-0 or 2-1, seemed clever and accomplished their intended purpose. But they proved ultimately ineffective because the sans-Bedard offense was so toothless that the Hawks simply lost games 1-0 or 2-1 instead.

In general, developing players individually, maintaining morale and unity and consistently messaging the importance of work ethic, togetherness and making smart decisions on and off the ice have been much higher priorities for Richardson.

The results so far with individual player development have been mixed, which is common. Among the young guys, Bedard has lived up to lofty expectations and Alex Vlasic has greatly exceeded expectations in their first NHL seasons. Kevin Korchinski has experienced plenty of adversity but has seemingly learned a lot. Lukas Reichel and Arvid Soderblom, conversely, have had very disappointing seasons.

Among the more established players, Philipp Kurashev has enjoyed a breakout season and Jason Dickinson, Joey Anderson and Colin Blackwell have thrived in the right roles. Taylor Raddysh and Jarred Tinordi, conversely, have been glaringly worse than last season.

Richardson does seem to embrace the right mentality with player development, staying patient and supportive without overreacting to slumps and hot streaks. He’s often praised for his dedication to showing players clips of things they did well — in addition to clips of things they need to fix — during video-review sessions.

Last season, some of his lineups and player-usage decisions — like giving Nikita Zaitsev more games and minutes than Wyatt Kaiser down the stretch — suggested he might over-prioritize veterans over prospects.

This season, however, has alleviated those worries. He has been more than happy to let Korchinski, for example, deal with trials-by-fire while consistently receiving second-pairing minutes.

In terms of messaging, Richardson has learned and refined his approach since taking the job. He was aware from the start that Millennial and Gen-Z NHL players today need to be handled differently than the Gen-X players of his era did, but his understanding of how to communicate best with them has only increased.

“You have to realize you have 20 different personalities on the bench,” he said. “You have to be careful because [one sentence] could be taken in a different meaning or context to 20 different people. When you’re trying to get 20 people to connect, especially five of them on the ice at the same time, you have to be really clear.”

That quote originated from an analysis of Richardson’s decision to ream out the Hawks during a first-period commercial break after their terrible start last weekend against the Sharks.

That game feels like a potentially momentous night for him as a coach — a night that helped solidify and validate his approach.

“We’re always up for discussion with [the players] about certain parts of our systems and what we do and questions on gray areas and how to fix them,” he explained.

“But when we feel like we’ve done our job and prepared them, [yet they’re] doing the exact opposite of what our pregame message was and our video of the other team was…that’s unprofessional and it’s unacceptable. I let them know that in the best way or fashion of urgency that I thought was needed.”

Even the timing of Richardson’s messaging during that Sharks game demonstrates his increasing comfort level as an NHL head coach and knowledge of game-within-the-game nuances.

He gave his rant during a commercial break to save his timeout, which he finds crucial to have on-hand late in the third period. He didn’t go into the locker room to address the team during the first intermission; he figured doing so would be either “contradictory or repetitive.” And he did go into the locker room at the second intermission — once the comeback had begun — to offer encouragement.

Every move worked beautifully. Against a better opponent, the outcome might have been different — but then again, the Sharks are one of few teams the Hawks can match up evenly against.

In the future, once Davidson has built up the Hawks to compete with upper-echelon foes, Richardson should theoretically have every chance to work the same magic against the Oilers and Rangers of the world.

The pressures on and expectations for Richardson will be far greater at that point, though. Coaching to win is a different animal than coaching to coach, as Richardson is currently doing, and there’s no data yet that indicates how effective he will be once his job description shifts.

That is, no doubt, a major question mark. But that was always destined to be a question mark just two years into the rebuild.

At this stage, it seems unfair to give Richardson anything less than a passing grade for his work so far — even if his win-loss record paints an uglier picture.