GM Kyle Davidson expected Blackhawks 'to be further' before coaching change

Nobody was expecting a parade down Michigan Avenue in Chicago at the end of the Blackhawks season. But with a generational talent in-house and a bunch of competent support staff signed in the summer, progress of some kind was non-negotiable.

So, with the Hawks holding the worst points percentage in the NHL, it’s somewhat predictable the axe has fallen on Luke Richardson.

Speaking one day after he made the decision to fire his coach, Chicago general manager Kyle Davidson said — while understanding the Hawks are very much still a rebuilding work in progress — the team has not performed to the level the organization expected.

"You have to be realistic with what you're expecting and what you demand out of a group, but I don't believe this is a last-place group,” Davidson told reporters Friday morning in Chicago.

The Blackhawks might be a young squad, but it’s not hard to see why hopes were raised in Year 2 of the Connor Bedard era. Of course, it starts with the expectation Bedard himself — coming off a Rookie of the Year showing in 2023-24 — would take another step forward. Davidson was also very busy in free agency last summer, bringing in veterans like winger Tyler Bertuzzi, defenceman T.J. Brodie and goalie Laurent Brossoit (who’s been sidelined by an injury) to try and raise the floor for this club.

But the gruesome numbers don’t lie.

Chicago is scoring just 2.42 goals per game, which ranks 31st in the league. Their minus-18 goal differential is worse than all but three teams, as is their 45.14 expected goals for percentage mark.

Making matters worse, of course, is the fact Bedard has been slowed by a sophomore slump. After scoring at a 26-goal pace as a freshman, the 19-year-old was stuck on three goals this season until days before the calendar flipped to December.

Bedard called Richardson “a really good guy” and said he was sad seeing him go. But he also was looking forward to working with a new coach in Anders Sorensen.

“It’s good to have the first skate and get comfortable and talk to him,” Bedard said. “It’s good we all know him a little bit from being at training camps and stuff like that, so it was a good first day.”

While Davidson was certainly not going to point any fingers at the young man who still figures to be his franchise player, he noted — regardless of who is behind the bench — more needs to be done right on the ice if the Hawks are to improve.

“Our team as a whole has not quite been what, realistically, what we expected us to be at this point,” he said. “I think we expected to be a bit further ahead than we are. Having said that, if you asked almost every player, to a person in that room, they’ll say they need to be better.”

The job of making Chicago’s players better now falls to the Swede Sorensen, whom Davidson confirmed will be the interim bench boss for the remainder of the season. Speaking on the 32 Thoughts podcast on Friday, Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman theorized — and stressed it was just his own thoughts — that perhaps Chicago initially contemplated another coach for its team; one who ultimately landed with its Central Division rivals in St. Louis.

“I can’t help but wonder, when (Jim Montgomery) was available (after being fired in Boston), I wonder if Chicago was in on it,” Friedman spitballed. “With what we know now, 20-20 hindsight, I have to wonder if that was something they looked at.”

Friedman noted the universally admired Richardson was in a tough spot. He was hired in 2022 at the nadir of the Blackhawks rebuild. And while a 30th-place showing in his first year behind the bench and some lottery luck allowed Chicago to draft Bedard in 2023, even onboarding a generational talent like that often isn’t enough to lift a franchise out of the muck fast enough to keep the coach around for the long haul.

“The odds are against you,” Friedman said, adding Richardson was in the final guaranteed year of a three-year contract. “Very few coaches get successful, long-term stints in a place when you start where Luke Richardson started with the Blackhawks.”

We’ll see if Sorensen — promoted from the Hawks’ AHL farm team — can do better joining the rebuild in progress.

Sorensen, 49, was the head coach at Rockford in the AHL before he got the interim job, making him a familiar face for many of the Blackhawks. He was hired by the organization as a development coach ahead of the 2013-14 season. He joined the IceHogs staff as an assistant coach beginning in 2018-19.

Sorensen becomes the first Swedish-born head coach in NHL history.

"I think for me, I’ve been a big believer in where my two feet are is where I’m going to work and try to get better and we’ll see what happens," Sorensen said. "Obviously, like you said, you want to strive to improve and get up to higher levels. It’s surreal right now, trying to digest."

Asked what he needs to do to secure the job long-term, a chuckling Sorensen responded: "Win games."

"We want to see progress with a lot of our younger players," he continued. "We want to make sure we’re kind of building off this and progressing and that’s the biggest thing."

--with files from The Associated Press