Blackhawks coach Luke Richardson reflects on first season: ‘This is the direction we wanted’

On Sunday, Richardson will turn 54 and also coach his 73rd Hawks game — a sign of his debut season nearing its end. He’s proud of the team culture he has helped build in it, although learning how to manage his time has been challenging.

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Blackhawks coach Luke Richardson.

Blackhawks coach Luke Richardson feels proud of the team culture he has helped create this season.

Pat Nabong/Sun-Times file photo

ST. PAUL, Minn. — The nine hours between morning skate at 10:30 and puck drop at 7:30 p.m. on a normal game day often feel more like three hours to Blackhawks coach Luke Richardson.

But he has learned how to not let that rattle him. If it feels like three hours, then he simply must get everything done in three hours.

“You don’t get as much time as you think you have and as you would like,” he said. “I always try to keep that in mind.”

On Saturday, Richardson will log his 72nd game as an NHL head coach when the Hawks face the Wild. On Sunday, he will turn 54 — and coach his 73rd game as the Hawks host the Canucks, with a “win” being gift No. 1 on his wish list.

But on Friday, after a fairly relaxed practice in Minnesota, the still-53-year-old paused to reflect on his first season as Hawks coach as its sunset approaches.

Behind the scenes, it has been a long learning process for him. As a former player, AHL head coach and NHL assistant coach, he couldn’t have arrived with a more diverse array of experiences, but nothing quite compares to the pressure and workload of this particular job.

It hasn’t looked like that from the outside, though. And that has been intentional on his part.

“The NHL is fast,” he said. “The game day seems fast. You’ve got to stay on top of things. We do that as a coaching staff. We stay ahead of it so we can be organized. 

“Otherwise, if you feel like you’re scrambling, [then] you look like you’re scrambling. And you don’t want to look like you’re scrambling as a coach because the players feel that and then it trickles onto the ice somehow.”

Piecing together his schedule like a puzzle — to make sure he talks to everyone he wants to and completes every task he needs to — requires careful planning. 

One five-minute conversation in one room sometimes can lead to missing a window for a conversation in another room. There are, after all, many different groups of people operating around him: forwards, defensemen, goaltenders, assistant coaches, trainers, equipment managers, support staff, front-office executives, reporters and so forth.

But regular, open communication is such an important part of his desired team culture and relationship-building is such an important part of his coaching style that he can’t afford to neglect anyone. It’s crucial to him that anyone within the organization feels comfortable approaching him either “if something’s working right or if something’s wrong.”

Over time, he has nailed down the time-management skills to make that possible in spite of everyone’s incongruous schedules. The result is an overarching atmosphere of positivity and unity within the Hawks. He’s most proud of that accomplishment.

“I don’t know if necessarily I did it, but I just tried to create an environment where the players could do it,” Richardson said. “This team — from the beginning of the year, [even though] there’s a lot of different players, until now — created that environment in the room. We gave them that area and platform to do it, and they did a great job, and they’re still doing it.”

“I’m proud of how they’re playing. I feel like we did the right thing as a coaching staff.”

That might sound strange about a team with 24 wins in 71 games, but it’s true nonetheless.

“Our record doesn’t [exactly show it],” he admitted. “People, if they read this, are going to go, ‘What is he talking about?’ But if you’ve watched how we’ve played all year, other than maybe four games or so, it was a pretty good first step for the organization with all of us being new.”

There are a few in-game lineup decisions that Richardson is still kicking himself over, such as sending Philipp Kurashev instead of Tyler Johnson out for a late defensive-zone faceoff in a January win over the Flames. An outside observer would never have noticed it, but Richardson mentioned that at the time and again Friday. It clearly has stuck with him.

Conversely, outside observers have had reasonable gripes at times with Richardson’s possible over-allegiance to veterans. His reluctance to scratch guys such as Jack Johnson for prospects such as Isaak Phillips has been mildly controversial. 

On one hand, Richardson believes veterans are needed in any lineup to guide the younger players around them. On the other hand, he realizes the “next step is probably going a bit younger,” and he’s excited to unleash some of the talented prospects moving into his purview. 

“Maybe in a situation at the end of the game when you need a goal, [we can give] a guy like [Lukas] Reichel ... that opportunity to succeed there,” he said. “Maybe at the end of the game when you’re up by one goal, a guy like [Wyatt] Kaiser [can] be on the penalty kill. When you have that ability to succeed, your confidence grows. I’m just trying to find those right moments [for them].”

For all of Richardson’s inclinations to publicly discuss systems and tactics, he’s not quite as chatty about his own life. A positive appraisal of living in Chicago’s “welcoming community” — made perhaps less overwhelming by the fact he’s not often recognized around the city — was all he offered on that front.

But he was willing to admit feeling validated by the positive culture he has seen, the success of his systems and the positive feedback he has received. 

When the Hawks’ season concludes April 13, he expects to feel largely satisfied with Chapter 1 of his NHL head-coaching book.

“I always had a thought process in my head of how I would do things and the way I thought it would work,” he said. “I think it has, for the most part.

“This is the direction [in which] we wanted to start. And that’s what it is. It’s a start.”

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