Blackhawks Derek King embraces new role as assistant coach: He has no ego

Practice, practically speaking, ended 10 or 15 minutes earlier, but Derek King was still out there on the ice, feeding one-timers to wingers. It was an optional skate at the Honda Center in Anaheim, and Arvid Söderblom — the only goaltender who took the ice — already was back in the locker room, so the Blackhawks were using a very basic “shooter tutor,” a simple mesh net that filled up most of the goal, with small openings along the top shelf, two more below where the goalie’s glove and blocker would be, and a five-hole slot.

The Blackhawks — well, the third- and fourth-liners who didn’t choose to take the option that afternoon — kept drawing iron or hitting the net. They were making this thing look like Tony Esposito. So King — a 40-goal scorer 30 years ago — called for the puck himself, and promptly tucked it into the top-left corner on the first try. The players cheered, and King smiled broadly as he swung around the net, very much in his element.

This is what King likes doing best — working with players, teaching and actually coaching. And this is what he didn’t do enough of last season. There was always somewhere else to be, something else to do, someone else to talk to.

“You look at Luke (Richardson) and he’s doing a good job of it — he’s coaching, right?” King said following that practice last Friday. “I kind of got away from that last year. I had to do media, or I had to be here, or I’m about to be there, I have to put out fires, I have to get ready and everything. I managed my time maybe not as good as I should have.”

That’s not to say that King didn’t enjoy his stint as the Blackhawks’ interim head coach following Jeremy Colliton’s firing in early November last season. Nor is it to say King isn’t proud of the work he did in taking over a moribund team at arguably the nadir of franchise history and almost singlehandedly flipping the vibe around while turning it into a competitive squad. Nor does it mean King didn’t want to keep the job. He very much wanted to keep the job.

But this is where he’s happiest. This is where he’s doing the most good. This is where he belongs. The title is almost irrelevant.

Perhaps no one else in the league would have accepted an assistant coaching job with the same team for which he was just the head coach.

Derek King. (Bill Smith / NHLI via Getty Images)

But perhaps no one in the league is quite like Derek King. He’s an anomaly in the NHL. There’s no ego there, no chip on his shoulder, no sneering defiance burning within. Even as head coach, as the voice of the team, there was no spin, no polish, no false veneer to hide behind. He is exactly what he looks like.

And what he looks like is a guy who’s really enjoying himself.

“That’s what people have said to me — ‘Why would you want to do that?’” King said. “They think I should be like, ‘Screw you! You don’t think I can coach?’ But that has nothing to do with it. They feel I can help and they wanted to keep me on. And why wouldn’t I?”

Really, there are plenty of reasons why he wouldn’t. For one, yeah, it’s hard not to be at least a little insulted when a team picks someone else to take your job — general manager Kyle Davidson gave King “the old we’re going in a different direction speech,” King said. For another, just about every assistant coach in the league harbors dreams of becoming a head coach in the NHL, King included. And the chances of a demoted former interim coach becoming the head coach of that same team seem awfully slim. Especially when the new coach is just starting a four-year contract and has the kind of long leash that only comes with an openly declared rebuild. Surely, the path back to bench boss would be more navigable as an assistant on another NHL team. Then there’s the ego hit that comes with walking into the same room with the same players as an assistant coach after being the top guy for nearly a full season.

King shrugged all of that off.

“Having the opportunity to stay with the organization and be a part of this rebuild, I didn’t hesitate,” King said. “This is where I started right? This is what I was. I was the assistant coach. I did skills after practice, I worked with guys individually, I got into the video and stuff. So now I’m back doing all that, and I’m really enjoying it. I missed it.”

Davidson knew King was wired differently than most coaches, and he knew he wanted him back on staff. But ultimately, he wasn’t sure King — or Richardson — would be comfortable with it.

“It wasn’t even really our call,” Davidson said. “We said to Luke, ‘You know what, your staff is your business. But this guy is a great guy, and he’s got a great way with players, and I think he could be a really good counterpoint. But you’ve got to talk to him and you’ve got to feel the same way.’”

Richardson didn’t need much prodding. The two played against each other in the Ontario Hockey League, both broke into the NHL at the same time in 1987-88, had long and successful NHL careers (21 years for Richardson, 13 for King), and then coached against each other in the American Hockey League. They respected each other well enough that Richardson didn’t even need to get mutual buddy Dallas Eakins’ blessing before offering him the job.

Facing both reality and a long-term rebuild, Richardson wanted to build a more modern coaching staff to suit today’s young players — one built on hands-on teaching and open communication, not fire and brimstone. King fit the mold perfectly, and his knowledge of most of the roster from his time in Chicago and as Rockford’s head coach made it an easy call.

“We wanted to have a personality as a coaching staff that we can teach and not be yelling and screaming and demanding things that are unachievable at this moment,” Richardson said. “We wanted to build and teach and learn and work well together and have a calmer demeanor doing that, so we can get that point across. After a while, players just tune that out if you’re always yelling and screaming. And so I thought it was a good fit. I think it’s working out really well.”

When Davidson had settled on Richardson and had given King the “different direction” spiel, King asked about his contract. Davidson, hoping that Richardson would indeed want King on his staff, told King not to worry about that just yet, because Richardson was likely to call.

King spent a couple of days mulling the offer with his wife and three sons. But deep down, he knew what his answer was going to be the moment Richardson made the offer.

“It was a no-brainer,” King said. “And plus, I didn’t have to update my resume and chum it out and make phone calls. I’ve been through that. The fact that he wanted me and management still wanted me, I thought, well, that’s a good thing, right? That’s not a bad thing.”

That’s how Davidson got to essentially hire a coach he really liked, fire a coach he really liked, yet somehow keep both.

“I’m not entirely surprised (King accepted the job) because he has no ego,” Davidson said. “And I think he genuinely loves being part of the organization, he liked how we do things and how we operate. It’s a testament to the person that he is and the lack of ego that he has that he was willing to do it. He saw that it was a good situation with a good head coach and he could still be involved at the NHL level and really help us push this thing forward. So yes and no. I was a little surprised, but I was relieved that he wanted to stay.”

And hey, King might have been demoted, but he got a new three-year contract out of it — and a raise.

“Pretty good deal,” he said with a laugh.

Assistants are critical to running a successful team — working on individual skills, running special-teams meetings, cleaning up messes and soothing bruised egos left by the head coach. But unlike coordinators in football, they operate out of the limelight. So assuming his five months as interim coach were his last as head coach of the Blackhawks, King is likely to go down as a mere footnote in franchise history.

But what he accomplished in those five months shouldn’t be forgotten.

King arrived from Rockford on a Saturday morning in November to take over a team that entered the season with playoff hopes but started 1-9-2, that had just played one of the worst games imaginable in a pathetic 5-1 loss in Winnipeg, just 11 days after the Jenner & Block report laid bare all the franchise’s sins in one of the darkest days in franchise history.

Into a sullen and embittered locker room walked this soft-spoken, self-deprecating, folksy guy with wacky uncle energy, an arsenal of dad jokes and zero NHL coaching experience. And it worked.

The mood changed dramatically. Instantly. The Blackhawks won their first four games under King. Players started having fun again. They never had a chance of sniffing contention after that horrid start, but King managed to salvage the season to an unlikely degree. He convinced his players to loosen up a bit out there. He reinforced his mantra of “habits protect you,” constantly reminding players that if they have good habits on the ice, their mistakes will be minimal and minimized. He tweaked the way the Blackhawks played in the neutral zone and the defensive zone. He was critical when necessary, but encouraging always. He was unceasingly honest, even when it meant being harsh — whether he was talking to a player one-on-one or in a press conference.

He might not have been the biggest Xs and Os guy, but he fundamentally changed the team all the same.

“It’s just his personality,” said Reese Johnson, who played for King in Rockford and Chicago. “That’s what makes him a good coach and gives him a good relationship with the players. He knows when to be critical and he knows when to keep you going. He has good balance. I think Kinger did an unbelievable job going from head coach in Rockford to head coach in Chicago, and now to assistant coach. The one that thing stands out to me the most is throughout those years, he’s just always been himself. He really hasn’t changed throughout his roles.”

King behind the bench during the 2021-22 season. (Steph Chambers / Getty Images)

But King had been thrown straight into the deep end, and really, he was just trying to keep his head above water. As head coach in Rockford, he basically managed a staff of one and only had to answer to the local PR guy and Rockford GM Mark Bernard. His job was to develop players; everything else was secondary, even winning. In Chicago, in his own words, “Everybody’s watching, and everybody’s judging.”

So he leaned on assistant coach and former head coach Marc Crawford — the only holdover from Colliton’s staff — to handle much of the job. Crawford often ran practices. Crawford handled a lot of the Xs and Os. Crawford even chose King’s second assistant coach, Rob Cookson, because King didn’t really know anybody around the league. The hours got away from him, he wasn’t getting his own workouts in the way he’d like, and the commute to see his family back in Rockford took a toll on him (and on his wife, who was often dealing with the three boys while King stayed in a place he had in Chicago).

King loved every second of it. But he felt every second of it, too.

“It was tiring,” he said.

Looking back on it, King can see what he did right and what he could have done better, how he could have made things easier on himself and had a better work-life balance. But he wouldn’t go so far as to call them regrets. He knows the challenge he faced, and how improbable (if modest) his success was.

“I’m proud of it, yeah,” he said. “Would I change things? Sure, I would, knowing what I know now. That’s natural. But going into it, I felt I did what I needed to do, and what I felt was the right thing. So I sleep at night.”

As that practice in Anaheim wound down, King was one of the last guys off the ice, lingering to work on some skills work with the stragglers. Richardson had long left; the press was waiting, and there were probably a dozen other things he had to handle before heading back to the hotel. It’s Richardson who has to tell guys that they’ll be scratched or sent to Rockford. It’s Richardson who has to delegate assignments to his staff. It’s Richardson who has to meet with Davidson to discuss the depth chart. It’s Richardson who has to sit down with team leaders and get the pulse of the room. It’s Richardson who has to handle the surprisingly sprawling bureaucracy of running an NHL locker room.

It used to be King who did all that. But now King gets to be the good cop, bucking a player up after the head coach has to break him down a bit. Now King gets to have the time to sit down with a player one-on-one to go over the little details of a botched power play, or to reinforce the habits of a good penalty kill. Now King gets to linger on the ice and fire off one-timers.

It’s all a little less difficult this season for King. He moved his family to the western suburb of Glen Ellyn; his kids love the high school and his twins play hockey at Johnny’s IceHouse West, just a few blocks from the United Center. He’s found that work-life balance that he never managed last season, not after suddenly being thrust into someone else’s burning house and handed a watering can.

“The hours are still there, but it’s maybe not quite as stressful,” he said. “I know what I need to do, how I can help. I ask (Richardson) what he needs. I come in the morning, do my stuff, leave and go home. It’s been great. I’m enjoying it.”

Would King love to be the Blackhawks’ head coach? Of course, he would. Does he think he deserved the job? Of course, he does. Will he try to become a head coach in the NHL again? Of course, he will. But while most coaches wouldn’t be caught dead accepting a demotion and would instead defiantly storm off into the unknown in search of another job, King isn’t like most coaches.

He was offered a job in the NHL. In an organization he knew well. With a roster full of players he cared about. To work for a coach he respected and liked. To do what he loves best — to teach, to grind, to coach.

And what’s so bad about that?

“When I was in Rockford, I never even thought about (an NHL job),” King said. “But once I got it and I got comfortable and it was the end of the year, I’m like, ‘This ain’t a bad gig.’ So whether it’s as a head guy or as an assistant, it’s the NHL. It’s pretty nice. It’s been great this year, it honestly has. I can’t think of one negative thing about it.”

(Photo of Derek King: John J. Kim / Chicago Tribune / Tribune News Service via Getty Images)

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