Why Hawks believe Richardson is right coach for rebuild originally appeared on NBC Sports Chicago
There's one thing Blackhawks GM Kyle Davidson made clear ahead of the organization's search for a permanent head coach. He wanted someone that would be here for the long haul, not just a placeholder during the rebuild.
Throughout the interview process, it became increasingly clear to Davidson that Richardson checked a lot of the boxes he was looking for and officially tabbed him as the new bench boss on Monday.
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"The initial reason that Luke's name popped up was something you're seeing a lot of over the last couple days is nobody has a bad word to say about him," Davidson said. "Everyone's had a great experience with him and so that was one of the first things that put him on our radar. Then once we got into the room with Luke something intangible – it just felt like it clicked. It felt really natural and comfortable.
"Once we got a little deeper into the how he sees the game and how he views players and his communication styles, it really resonated with us and it really felt like something that would work within the system that we're putting in place here. That was the main aspect of what drew us to Luke. And then once we got into a room and had a formal interview, the nuts and bolts really fell into place."
Richardson, 53, is well-respected within the hockey community, as former teammates and coaches have already attested to. He has a calming influence with natural leadership ability, and that was on display during Wednesday's press conference formally introducing Richardson to the city of Chicago.
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Richardson knows what he's signing up for, too. This is expected to be a longer-term rebuild that will surely have some growing pains in the short term.
Richardson appears to be the right man to lead the Blackhawks through it because he understands the importance of creating a winning culture, holding players accountable and the importance of development. His job is to try laying that foundation.
"I expressed that I’ve been through, both playing and coaching, rebuilds, teams that are competitive, whether it was two years ago in the Stanley Cup Final, the ultimate challenge is to get there," Richardson said. "I just feel that playing experiences, coaching experiences, I’m totally comfortable with developing players, having patience with players, but I am an optimist and I feel like I want to go win every game, and I’m going to approach every game like that. But realistically we have to take steps.
"We want to be better today than we were yesterday, and we want to be better again tomorrow. That’s the philosophy I take and to do that, you have to have a commitment of hard work and trust. And I think having trust is building relationships with your older players but also your younger players coming in and making sure your message is clear, everybody knows the rules and doing that, you can achieve execution in what you’re planning to do quickly and on a better path.
"We want to cut the lows to a shorter time and our highs we want to lengthen them out as far as we can. Doing that, we’re going to have to take those steps, one, two, three, four, we can’t go one to 10. We can’t skip anything, we have to do everything right. It’ll take a little time. I’m not sure how much time, but that’s exciting. I like a challenge and I’m ready for it."
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