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Disagreeing with your boss is not always smart in the business world. Here at HockeyBuzz, Ek is pretty fair-minded and respectful of divergent opinions, so I’m hopeful he’ll give me a pass here.
I am going to take the opposite point of view on his assertion that Brad Richards will (pretty much) fail in the second line center role with the Blackhawks.
The underpinning of this argument is that Richards is too slow to keep up with his linemates (likely Patrick Kane and Brandon Saad), and therefore will not be able to mesh with them.
The problem I have with this argument is that Kane and (often) Saad were centered the last two years by an even slower player than Richards, Michal Handzus.
The results were admittedly mixed. Handzus was very good in the 2013-14 playoffs before fizzling last season. But here’s where you can get some sense of how much better Richards will be centering Kane.
Kane averaged a point a game last year being centered by a committee of converted wings and Handzus.
Richards, conversely, racking up an (ummm) ok 51 points in 82 games last year, didn’t play with anyone remotely as productive as Kane. The Rangers most effective forward was Mats Zuccarello, with 59 points in 78 games.
Further, the opposite wing on the Hawks’ second line, Brandon Saad, was more productive than most Ranger wingers as well, certainly more so than Rick Nash or Carl Hagelin, with 47 points in 78 games.
On paper at least, the signs seem to point to a more productive 2014-15 for Richards, where he should pass 60 points (over a full season).
Less tangible is what I have been told the Hawks’ belief was in signing Richards: that getting away from the media fishbowl of New York, and the expectations tied to a huge contract, will allow Richards to thrive again.
This is certainly harder to quantify.
Regardless, adding Richards, especially assuming he does reasonably well in the Indianhead in terms of what is asked of him, could potentially provide a nice boost to the Hawks down the middle— at even strength and on the power play.
Saad and Kane were fairly to very productive with essentially no meaningful center between them. If Richards pluses the line, and he should, then opposing teams have a slightly larger matchup problem with the Hawks. The more he pluses it, the greater the problem for opponents.
As a roughly 50% faceoff guy and true center, he gives the Hawks another legitimate option—at least in as much as he will likely play more games than Handzus did, and therefore be available in more situations.
Is there a downside?
Sure, losing Handzus and, to a lesser extent, 4th line winger Brandon Bollig makes the Hawks an even smaller, less physical team. I’ll go into that in more detail in a subsequent blog.
Otherwise, it’s hard ot see anything but positives in this move for the Hawks. The only real questions are, how much, and for how long?
All for now,
JJ