Blackhawks Luke Richardson Gets Hostile and Defends His Surprise Roster Moves Made

The two major changes he made to the lineup was inserting captain Nick Foligno to the top line alongside Connor Bedard and Teuvo Teravainen. The idea behind this change was to add some toughness and a winger who can get the puck to both players as they are the prolific shooters and goal scores for this team. This move prompted the demotion of Ilya Mikheyev to the third line as he will be alongside Jason Dickinson and Joey Anderson.

He also made a change by scratching Craig Smith and recalling Andreas Athanasiou back into his lineup where he would be alongside Pat Maroon and Ryan Donato. Athanasiou will bring more speed and a scoring touch to his fourth line as Richardson continues to look for offense.

These changes have raised the question to where maligned forward Lukas Reichel will fit into the Blackhawks lineup as he is currently the 14th forward. There appears to be no plan now, and he will remain scratched from this lineup.

The Blackhawks will continue to work with their lineup in the early days of this season as it was made clear during the offseason by general manager Kyle Davidson that the team needs to start moving the needle forward and moving the team out of the basement of the standings well surely progress with their youngsters.

Time will tell if Richardson's changes makes any difference but it's a long season and there's much to be done between now and the end of April.