3 former head coaches who could be considered the worst in Blackhawks history

The Chicago Blackhawks have had some great head coaches. They have also had some terrible ones.

The Hawks replaced their greatest head coach, Joel Quenneville, with Jeremy Colliton, who could be considered one of the team's worst.

Colliton deserves consideration for worst of all time because he came in as a 33-year-old head coaching wunderkind and flamed out rather quickly. He tried to force a style of play that was not going to work with an aging roster.

To be fair, he was handed some poorly constructed rosters by former general manager Stan Bowman. He also had to take over for a legendary head coach who guided the team to three Stanley Cups. That is no easy task for any coach.

He also had to coach the team while the Brad Aldrich scandal was coming out, and the results of what Hawks leadership did in 2010 to cover up Aldrich's alleged sexual assault of player Kyle Beach were released in the Jenner Report.

Maybe that is why he might not qualify as the worst head coach of all time. Plus, Luke Richardson lost more games. The difference between Richardson and Colliton was that Richardson was never given a chance to win.

The Hawks were never trying to win while Richardson was the coach. Instead, the goal was to tank for better draft position to help with a rebuild that should have taken place the moment Colliton was hired.

The Hawks were trying to win with Colliton, even if it was misguided. Colliton did have some talent on the rosters he coached that, in theory, should have at least secured a wild-card spot. Instead, those teams always underachieved. The only reason he guided a Hawks team to the playoffs was because of the COVID-19 pandemic forced an expanded playoff in 2020, and Corey Crawford played great in goal during the opening round.

Otherwise, the Hawks were a mess under Colliton due in part to Colliton.

The Hawks went 87-92-26 during the 205 games he coached from 2018-2021 because he was too stubborn. Also, players could not escape his doghouse once they entered it (subscription required).

His stubborn belief in his man defense led to the Hawks having some of the worst defenses in the game.

Colliton has some company for being considered the worst head coach of all time.

Specifically, Dirk Graham and Alpo Suhonen, who had probably worse tenures.

Suhonen was the first European-born head coach in the NHL. The Hawks almost overcompensated for being late in embracing the European craze that was taking over the NHL. The thinking was to bring in a European coach to adapt to a more creatively driven game. However, it was never going to work. Not when owner Bill Wirtz's penny-pinching ways were never going to allow the front office to put a skilled enough roster on the ice to fit Suhonen's free-flowing offensive system.

The Hawks won just 29 games during the 2000-01 season. Suhonen resigned after that campaign because of a heart issue.

Had Suhonen worked out, maybe more teams would have embraced hiring European-born head coaches. Instead, NHL teams are still hesitant to hire European head coaches to this day (subscription required). Anders Sorenson did not further the cause with his lackluster interim head coach stint this past season for the Hawks.

Graham was another historic head coaching hire the Hawks made two years before adding Suhonen. The Hawks made Graham the first black head coach in NHL history when he was hired in 1998 to replace Craig Hartsburg.

The hope was that the former Hawks captain would turn around a franchise that sank into mediocrity despite Graham having little coaching experience.

The belief was his former captaincy would motivate a team to win. The problem was he wanted to play the old dump-and-chase game with a team that did not have a lot of speed or physicality to execute that system like the Hawks teams he skated on back in the 1980s and early 1990s. The team also lacked discipline. He clashed with many players, including star Tony Amonte.

He ended up getting reassigned to a different role within the organization after just 59 games into the 1998-99 season.

Ebbie Goodfellow has the worst winning percentage of a head coach who lasted more than a season. He was a coach back in the 1950s when there were just six teams. The game has evolved since then. That is why Colliton, Suhonen, and Graham are the candidates for the worst head coaches of all time in Blackhawks' franchise history.