The Chicago Blackhawks fired coach Luke Richardson on Thursday, with the team off to the worst start in the league nearly a third of the way through his third season.

The Blackhawks are 8-16-2, two standings points behind the next-worst team, Nashville. Richardson went 57-118-15 with Chicago.

Anders Sorensen of the AHL’s Rockford IceHogs was named interim coach.

“Today I made the difficult decision to move on from Luke as our head coach,” general manager Kyle Davidson said in a statement. “We thank him for his efforts and contributions to the organization and our community. As we have begun to take steps forward in our rebuilding process, we felt that the results did not match our expectations for a higher level of execution this season and ultimately came to the decision that a change was necessary.”