Connor Bedard gets new linemates: Luke Richardson goes wild with new line combination for Chicago Blackhawks

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Joshua Deeds
November 9, 2024 (5:59 PM)

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The Chicago Blackhawks defeat by the Dallas Stars evidently shook Luke Richardson to the core. The team gave up 3 goals, and the only goal-scorer would be Tyler Bertuzzi on the power play late in the 3rd.

So back to the drawing board right? That's exactly what Richardson has done, as he has foregone the idea of building chemistry, or keeping lines together that work.

Today he shook up the top line with Connor Bedard, was previously paired with Taylor Hall, and Lukas Reichel against Dallas.

Instead, he's opted to promote Nick Foligno to the top line, with Connor Bedard and Lukas Reichel.

It's obvious the team needs to do some work in all zones of the ice, and neither the offense or defense could give Arvid Soderblom support in Dallas.

Now, with hope the Blackhawks can find a little juice with Foligno on the 1st line once more.

Foligno will move up from the third line with Joey Anderson, and Jason Dickinson. And it seems, while the Foligno-Bedard line was a great line if we're going to use analytics on what the best combination for the Blackhawks was in XG% would be Connor Bedard centering Nick Foligno, and Teuvo Teravainen.

They out-performed the other 3 lines according to MoneyPuck with a 57.1 XG%.

Expected goals (xG) is a model-based metric used to isolate the evaluation of play-driving and chance-creation/suppression ability from things a player cannot control such as bounces, quality of goaltender, etc. The models make use of the public data tracked by the NHL. The NHL tracks every unblocked shot attempt (Fenwick) and collects over 100 pieces of information per unblocked shot attempt (shooter, location on ice, type of shot, etc.). Analytics nerds leverage this historical data to train the data-driven expected goals models.

Should Luke Richardson have broken up the trio in the first place? What do you think?