Chicago Blackhawks interim head coach Anders Sorensen will step into the dressing room Friday morning and introduce himself to his new team.
Some players will know him from having been coached by him in the AHL with the Rockford IceHogs. Others might have some familiarity because he’s been around at training camps and in the organization for a while. But for a lot of the Blackhawks, he’ll be an unknown. They’ll likely have been searching his name on Google just like a lot of readers have today. For everyone, here’s a profile on him from 2022.
There’s a challenge that undoubtedly will come with that for Sorensen, who was promoted from AHL coach on Thursday after Luke Richardson’s firing. The Blackhawks have a lot of NHL veterans who have been coached by a lot of longtime coaches. They’ve been around and have an idea of how things should be run. Sorensen will have to earn their respect. From the start, what he says and what he does will factor into their level of buy-in. They’re also proud veterans who have underperformed so far, so that may help Sorensen’s task.
Sorensen’s job will be to partly get more out of those older players. Blackhawks general manager Kyle Davidson signed Tyler Bertuzzi and Teuvo Teräväinen to elevate the team from what it had been the last two seasons, and they didn’t under Richardson. Bertuzzi and Teräväinen have been two of the more disappointing players this season.
Could Taylor Hall provide more? How Richardson handled the communication around Hall’s recent healthy scratch certainly raised some eyebrows. Can the defense be more offensive? What system changes could Sorensen make to keep the Blackhawks as competitive as they have been but be on the other side of their narrow defeats? Another goal could have been the difference in a lot of their games. Could more consistent lines bring more consistent results? That was a criticism of Richardson the past month. There are some obvious changes Sorensen can make.
All of that is important, and all of that will come into play as Davidson assesses whether Sorensen should be considered in his search for a permanent head coach after the season. But what’s most important and what could ultimately determine how long Sorensen is in charge is how Connor Bedard fares under him.
The @NHLBlackhawks have announced Anders Sorensen as interim head coach. pic.twitter.com/cUszXLuSz7
— NHL (@NHL) December 5, 2024
Regardless of what Sorensen is able to do over the next 56 games, the Blackhawks aren’t winning the Stanley Cup this season. They’re likely not going to make a push for the playoffs, either. They’re so far behind right now. If they can move up five spots in the standings, that would be a significant accomplishment and that’s ultimately what Davidson sought from this season’s team. His goal this season was to take a step. It didn’t have to be a big step, just one in which the Blackhawks weren’t among the worst or second-worst teams in the league any longer.
Davidson’s priority this season was on development. He loaded the AHL IceHogs with high-end prospects and gave Sorensen the responsibility of bringing them along. There likely are more players on the IceHogs now who will be with the Blackhawks when they’re competitive again than there are current Blackhawks who will still be around. And at the NHL level, it was about Richardson guiding along a few younger players, such as Alex Vlasic, Wyatt Kaiser and Lukas Reichel, alongside mostly veterans. But more than anything, this season was about Bedard and furthering his development. The reality is, the future of the Blackhawks hinges on Bedard. It’s that simple. If Bedard hits and becomes the superstar he was drafted to be, the Blackhawks will be fine. History tells us if you’re consistently in the Hart Trophy conversation, your team is almost always a Stanley Cup contender. If that’s the case, Bedard will do a lot for himself, but he’ll also carry along a lot of players, too, and the Blackhawks have a lot of potential talent in their pipeline. For those who worried about whether the Blackhawks should have selected Artyom Levshunov or Ivan Demidov in the last draft, it’ll all be irrelevant if Bedard hits. If he doesn’t, none of it matters. The rebuild will forever go on.
It’s not a given Bedard will get there. He had a promising first year. His second season has been trying. He’s been good, especially for the second-youngest player in the league, and is averaging more points per game at 19 years old than a lot of notable future stars did. But he’d be the first to say he hasn’t met his own expectations. His 12-game goalless streak opened his eyes to how challenging the NHL can be.
Some of that is on him. There are people around the league who think Bedard doesn’t have the all-around skill set to be as individualistic as he tries to be. He can’t get away with what he did in juniors and tear up teams by himself with an elite shot and vision. He probably needs help in the NHL. It’s a lot easier to score when you’re getting passed the puck in dangerous places, rather than attempting to enter the zone and beat a series of defenders and a goalie by yourself. Even most of the league’s premier players need teammates to help them.
But that, and Bedard’s overall development, is also on the Blackhawks. His linemates matter. The situations he’s put in matters. His ice time matters. The consistency of all that matters. How he’s coached when he succeeds and fails matters. Richardson seemed to lose sight of some of that this season. As he was looking for solutions to improve the team, it appeared to sometimes come to the detriment of Bedard and the long-term plan for him. Sure, you’d like Bedard to be better defensively and become a two-way forward, but let him master being offensive and creative at this level before you try to round him out. What he can do with the puck will always trump what he does without it.
Now, it’s Sorensen’s job to figure out how to get the most out of Bedard. Some of what Sorensen learned by working with Reichel and Frank Nazar over the last few years in Rockford might apply. Sorensen has definitely gotten Nazar going the past month. It sounds like Davidson has some ideas about where he thinks Sorensen can help Bedard, but he wants to hear Sorensen’s ideas, too. Sorensen is known as someone who brings outside-the-box ideas to development, and Davidson has listened.
Davidson might be more hands-on than he was with Richardson, especially early on as Sorensen takes over, but Sorensen will still be given a lot of power. He’ll have his say on how he handles Bedard’s development. Time will tell, but Sorensen could play a huge role in the future of Bedard and the Blackhawks.
(Photo: John E. Sokolowski / Imagn Images)
