As a coach, Todd Richards lives moment-to-moment.
And to be fair, that’s his job – a job that is part strategist, part teacher, part psychologist, part manager and part motivator. So forgive him if he wasn’t locked in on the outside noise about the Blue Jackets’ three-year lack of a captain, for he was aware of what it meant but also comfortable with how things were going.
The Blue Jackets have won at least 40 games in both of Richards’ full, 82-game seasons as head coach and they are a tiebreaker away from two playoff appearances in the last three years, so the going hasn’t exactly been catastrophic of late.