Derek King has settled this season back into the kind of coaching role in which he’s most experienced. No longer pulled in a hundred different directions as interim head coach, he can focus on working hands-on with the Blackhawks’ forward group.
But King’s honesty hasn’t gone anywhere — and honestly, he’s understandably disappointed by the forward group’s performance so far.
“I mean, we’re last in goals for,” King said Tuesday. “We don’t shoot the puck enough. So a lot of our stuff [is about working on] changing sides, [going] low-to-high, getting to the net, shooting pucks when you get the opportunity. We still keep beating into them until they figure it out.”
The Hawks’ inexplicable team-wide hesitance to shoot has been an issue since October. They average only 45.3 shot attempts per 60 minutes at five-on-five, which ranks 31st in the NHL. And while lack of puck possession is a major factor, it’s not the only factor.
So how has it proven so difficult, even impossible, to change that mindset for the better? King suspects it’s because of snowballing lack of confidence.
One player in a scoring drought will often defer too much to teammates. But when an entire team falls into a scoring drought, everyone deferring to each other doesn’t accomplish much.
“A guy struggling to score goals passes the puck more instead of shooting more,” he said. “I’ve been in that position, too. You’re in a rut and you want to score, but then you start overthinking it, so you’re like, ‘Here,’ and just pass it off. We’re doing that a little too much.”
He called out Taylor Raddysh and Max Domi as particularly frequent offenders of his instructions to shoot more.
“I always give it to Max a little bit,” King said. “Plus I know his [Tie Domi] well, so his dad isn’t going to come after me. But [Max] has a great shot, and he has to use it more.”
Comments like that demonstrate, however, how effective King’s greatest strength — his easygoing humor — can be.
His interview Tuesday in the place of head coach Luke Richardson — who missed morning skate with an illness, creating the perfect opportunity for King to revive his classic “bad shrimp” joke — offered numerous reminders of that.
When Richardson made the unconventional decision to offer King this assistant role and King accepted it, they both knew this would likely be a challenging, loss-laden season. They therefore also both knew maintaining a healthy, uplifting team mood and culture would be equally important.
And King, through his humor, and Richardson, through his steadiness, have both done well with that.
“The other day, I got a little heated on the bench, a little bent, and [Luke] was like, ‘Well, something’s wrong. If Kinger’s getting angry, something’s wrong,'” King joked.
“The biggest thing with Luke is his demeanor, his calmness. When he does raise his voice, guys know, ‘OK, we have to pick it up a little bit.’ But he’s never throwing a marker, kicking over a Gatorade stand or anything like that. He has been really good. This team is fortunate to have a guy like that, because there are other coaches out there maybe not handling [losing] as well.”
Richardson’s presence has freed King from many of the extraneous head-coaching duties that bogged him down last year, too, narrowing his job responsibilities to coaching and coaching alone.
King admitted in August he would’ve preferred being hired as permanent head coach, but he appreciates this perhaps better-suited role nonetheless.
“I enjoy it because that’s where I started — working with the guys,” he said. “I probably lost a little bit of that last year. Managing my time, I could’ve done a better job of that. But you learn and you move on.”
King’s regret
King said he wishes he had done many things differently as interim head coach last season.
It sounded like one of those regrets was relinquishing so much day-to-day control to assistant Marc Crawford — who functioned at times, especially early in King’s tenure, like the real head coach — and Crawford’s old friend Rob Cookson, who he brought in as the Hawks’ third-in-command. King didn’t name names, though.
“I would’ve maybe taken over a little more in the video part, preparing the guys and stuff like that,” he said. “In the American League, I was always giving guys — whether it was [then-assistant] Anders [Sorensen] or somebody else — [duties like], ‘You guys run the drill. It’s your drill.’ That’s how I approached it last year.
“Watching how things are run now, I probably should’ve run the drills myself. Whether they were my drills or not, [I should] just take it over and be that voice.”
