Another head-coaching change hit the AHL on Thursday afternoon when Rockford IceHogs head coach Anders Sorensen was promoted to the parent Chicago Blackhawks. Sorensen will take over as interim head coach after Chicago fired Luke Richardson.

Chicago assistant general manager Mark Eaton will take on the interim head-coaching job in Rockford. The Blackhawks sit stuck last in the NHL with an 8-16-2 record and have lost 10 of their past 13 games. They went 19-54-9 last season for a 31st-place finish. Sorensen’s NHL head-coaching debut will come Saturday afternoon when the Blackhawks host the Winnipeg Jets.

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Sorensen, 49, is the third consecutive Rockford head coach to be promoted to a role in Chicago. He replaced Derek King in November 2021 when King went to Chicago after the Blackhawks fired Jeremy Colliton. It was Colliton who had made the jump from the Rockford head-coaching job to Chicago to replace head coach Joel Quenneville in November 2018. King, who spent the rest of the 2021-22 season as the interim head coach, shifted to an assistant’s role after Chicago hired Richardson before the 2022-23 campaign; he remains with the Blackhawks.

Sorensen put together a 117-89-16-7 record with Rockford, where he had been an assistant coach for parts of three seasons. The Blackhawks have entrusted him and the Rockford coaching staff with the organization’s top prospects. This fall they opted to send a trio of first-round picks – forward Frank Nazar along with defenseman Kevin Korchinski and Artyom Levshunov – Rockford rather than keeping them in Chicago. Korchinski had spent last season with the Hawks while Levshunov went second overall in this past June’s NHL Draft. Nazar, who turned pro after two seasons at the University of Michigan, has taken control of second place in AHL scoring with 11-13-24 through 18 games.

The 47-year-old Eaton played 15 pro seasons and 650 NHL games, winning the Stanley Cup with the Pittsburgh Penguins in 2009. He came to the Chicago organization in 2014 and has held a variety of front-office positions.

The IceHogs continued their six-game road trip with a 7-3 win at Lehigh Valley on Wednesday night. They next play Friday night at Hartford. Since opening the season with a 4-8-0-0 record, they have gone 4-1-2-0 in their past seven games to climb to fourth place in the Central Division.

Rockford is now the second AHL team to go through a coaching change this season. After going 0-8-0-1 to begin the season, Utica Comets head coach Kevin Dineen was replaced by assistant coach Ryan Parent on Nov. 6. Parent was given an interim tag for the remainder of this season. Last season had Hartford’s Kris Knoblauch and Drew Bannister of Springfield take in-season promotions to NHL head-coaching jobs. Knoblauch went to the Edmonton Oilers and took them to Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final. Bannister moved up to the parent St. Louis Blues but was fired Nov. 24.

Richardson, whose coaching background featured four seasons with the Binghamton Senators, went 57-118-15 during his tenure in Chicago.

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