Last-place Chicago Blackhawks fire coach, name interim replacement

This story was updated to correct a misspelling.

The Chicago Blackhawks fired coach Luke Richardson on Thursday with the team sitting at the bottom of the NHL standings.

Anders Sorensen, coach of the Blackhawks’ Rockford IceHogs team in the American Hockey League, was named interim head coach.

The move happened with generational player Connor Bedard going through a sophomore slump and unhappy with his production. He had a recently ended a 12-game goal drought and didn’t make the Canadian roster for this season’s 4 Nations Face-Off.

‘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,’ general manager Kyle Davidson said in a statement about the coaching move.

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Richardson, 55, was hired before the start of the 2022-23 season. The Blackhawks finished 30th overall, moved up three spots in the draft lottery and chose Bedard, considered the NHL’s best prospect since Connor McDavid.

He was coach for Bedard’s first NHL season, when the center won rookie of the year despite missing 14 games with a broken jaw. But the Blackhawks finished with the league’s second worst record and a .317 points percentage.

It has been more of the same, even with Chicago adding veterans Tyler Bertuzzi and Teuvo Teravainen to complement Bedard. The Blackhawks’ record is 8-16-2 and they’re in a 2-7-1 slump.

Richardson leaves Chicago with a 57-118-15 record and won’t get a chance to coach in this season’s Winter Classic.

Richardson is the third NHL coach to be fired this season, following the Boston Bruins’ Jim Montgomery and the St. Louis Blues’ Drew Bannister.

Sorensen, 49, a native of Sweden, has been with the Blackhawks organization since 2013-14 and become Rockford head coach in 2021-22, making the playoffs in all three seasons.