Luke Richardson's firing shows the standards have been raised for the Chicago Blackhawks

The standards were supposed to be raised this season for the Chicago Blackhawks. The team's record indicates it has been more of the same bad hockey that has been seen over the past two seasons.

The team being dead last in the NHL has led to general manager Kyle Davidson announcing Luke Richardson has been fired as head coach.

Rockford IceHogs head coach Anders Sorensen has been named the interim head coach while assistant GM Mark Eaton will coach the IceHogs.

This is quite the reversal of Davidson's stance on Richardson from a month ago.

That is when Davidson gave Richardson a vote of confidence despite the club getting off to a terrible start.

Then again, the team was coming off two straight wins.

One issue is the franchise has not had a winning streak since the 2022-23 season. The team has not won three or more consecutive games since a five-game winning streak between February 17, 2023, through February 25, 2023. Ironically, Patrick Kane was traded shortly after that, and the Blackhawks have not had a winning streak since.

Richardson did not know a lot of winning as he was tabbed to take over the team at the beginning stages of an extensive rebuild in 2022. He went 57-118-15 in two and half seasons in charge.

He was not expected to win at all in his first season as the team was tanking to get the best odds to win the NHL Draft Lottery in 2023 and the right to draft Connor Bedard.

Last season, winning was hard to come by with all the injuries the team suffered to a roster that was thin on talent to begin with.

The hope was the Hawks would not be leading Tankathon again after Teuvo Teravainen and Tyler Bertuzzi were signed this offseason, along with some other veterans, to bridge the gap until the team's top prospects were ready. Also, Taylor Hall was coming back from a knee injury that wiped out most of his 2023-24 season.

The belief was these moves and Hall's return would raise the standards of the team. Instead, everyone has gotten worse.

It might not be fair to Richardson since he was not given the most talented rosters, but players are regressing this season. You could lose a lot in a rebuild if the guys you need to be on the rise are actually on the rise. This was not the case.

Bedard has just five goals on the season. It has gotten to the point where it has become reasonable to wonder if Richardson has ruined the phenom with his constant shuffling of the lines.

Richardson always shaking up the lines made it hard for Bedard to build chemistry with anyone on the top line. Actually, he was shuffling up his lines to the point where it was hard for anyone to build a lot of chemistry.

It was not just Bedard who has seen a decline in production this season.

Teuvo and Bertuzzi have yet to get going. Philipp Kurashev, who was a pleasant surprise last season, has been awful. Hall at one point was designated as a healthy scratch without Richardson correctly explaining why the former Hart Trophy winner was getting benched.

The only players who got better were Ryan Donato, Lukas Reichel, and Arvid Soderblom. Outside of Reichel, those are not the players you want to get better in the long run.

A poor offensive attack and inconsistent effort are other reasons the Hawks have been so awful this season. Then, too many mistakes were starting to creep in.

Finally, a 2-7-1 stretch recently has pretty much unofficially ended the season. The hope was maybe that would happen in February. Add all that up, and Richardson just ran out of time.

It was not like Richardson was given a high bar to clear. The expectation was not making the playoffs, but it was avoiding drafting in the top three again without having the best odds of that happening. The team was supposed to be on the rise and instead has stagnated or declined, depending on how you look at it.

When the standards are raised even minimally like that, someone has to be held accountable. In this case, it was Richardson.