Is Chicago Blackhawks head coach Luke Richardson ruining Connor Bedard?

Connor Bedard is discouraged, and that is not something the Chicago Blackhawks want the face of the franchise to be feeling during his second season.

This should be the year that Bedard keeps taking steps toward being an NHL legend. Instead, he has just three goals in 20 games.

He is still doing a good job of setting up his teammates with 12 assists, but this is a young man with one of the best shots in the NHL. Craig Smith should not have more goals than Bedard at this juncture in the season.

He certainly should not be in the middle of an 11-game scoring drought. He is too talented to go this long without cueing Chelsea Dagger.

One potential culprit in his recent struggles is head coach Luke Richardson constantly shuffling who plays next to Bedard on the top line.

The thought was when Teuvo Teravainen and Tyler Bertuzzi signed this past offseason, they would be the perfect linemates for Bedard. Teravainen had the goal-scoring ability and passing capability to complement Bedard. Bertuzzi had the willingness to go get the puck along the boards and sit in front of the goalie for screens.

Those three have played a total of 48 seconds together in the regular season. The chemistry between those three was not great in the preseason, but to use exhibition games as a basis to go in a different direction is baffling.

Richardson constantly shuffling the lines is a huge reason to think not only will he not be the man to coach the team when they are ready to compete, but also he is about to ruin Bedard.

Richardson keeps tinkering with the lines as if he is trying to compose his requiem. The problem is Richardson has not yet reached genius coaching status. He might think tinkering is a way to hold players accountable, but it is eating away at the team offensively.

It is one reason it is declining Bedard's production. That should be nearly impossible as Bedard proved he is a wunderkind during his rookie season. He was one of the most hyped rookies ever and actually lived up to it with 22 goals and 39 assists. He was good enough to win the Calder Trophy.

Now, he looks like a shell of himself.

Part of that is teams continuing to find ways to make life hard on him. Also, center might be asking him to do too much in the game, especially when the Hawks' offensive attack overall has been terrible this season.

Moving Bedard to the wing was not a terrible idea by Richardson. Pairing him up with Jason Dickinson was not half bad either since he can fill the defensive role at center better and is a capable offensive player to skate with Bedard.

Having Joey Anderson with those two is an example of Richardson crashing the Ferrari that is Bedard. Joey is a nice fourth-line player. He is hard-working and always willing to go battle for the puck. He is just not skilled enough to play with Bedard, and even Anderson knows it.

At some point, you want to scream at Richardson that, at a minimum, he has one objective to keep everyone happy, and that is to make sure Bedard never regresses. That should not be a hard objective to achieve, and somehow, Richardson is falling short with all this line shuffling around his best player.

No wonder there has been calls for him to be fired even making the playoffs was in the cards.

What Richardson should be doing is either giving some runway to a Bedard-Bertuzzi-Teravainen line or having Nick Foligno join Dickinson with Bedard on the top line since Foligno has always been Connor's hockey dad.

It cannot even hurt to see if Philipp Kurashev can re-spark his chemistry with Bedard--and his season since Kurashev has now been a healthy scratch twice--by putting them back together. The key is to put two players next to Bedard that he can be comfortable with.

The improved defense over the past couple of games has been nice to see from Bedard, but he is an offensive genius. It is time to pair him up with some teammates who can get his offense unlocked and free the offensive attack to score more than two goals a game.