Is it Luke Richardson’s fault that Tyler Bertuzzi has only two even-strength goals in 26 games? Or that Teuvo Teräväinen does, too? Is it Richardson’s fault that the Chicago Blackhawks have been outscored 14-6 with T.J. Brodie on the ice? That Philipp Kurashev has fallen into a well, outscored 18-3 at five-on-five? Is it Richardson’s fault that Connor Bedard keeps finding iron or leather with seemingly every shot he fires?

Does it matter?

Does anything matter at this point when it comes to the Blackhawks?

That’s the most distressing thing about general manager Kyle Davidson’s decision to fire Richardson on Thursday — the collective shrug with which it was met. Sure, there’s a corner of the fan base that was fuming about another lost Blackhawks season, and they got the head on a spike that they wanted. Good for them.

But a big chunk of Chicago stopped caring a while ago. Maybe it was when Davidson tanked so nakedly, dealing away Alex DeBrincat and letting Dylan Strome walk two summers ago. Maybe it was when Davidson didn’t even offer franchise icons Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews the chance to re-sign and usher in the next generation of Blackhawks, a ruthless decision that left many fans cold. Maybe it was when the Blackhawks disappeared from most fans’ televisions at the start of this season, the Chicago Sports Network debacle conjuring up so many references to “Dollar” Bill Wirtz that he was practically trending Wednesday night.

As Florida Panthers coach Paul Maurice slyly (and rightly) noted last month, nobody outside of Chicago is going to feel pity for the Blackhawks less than a decade after their third Stanley Cup championship in six seasons. Success is cyclical, after all, and the golden age of Chicago hockey is a still living memory for current high-school freshmen.

But, man, things are bleak right now.

The Blackhawks are bad, dead last in the NHL.

The Blackhawks are going to be bad for a while, with much of their deep prospect pool still years away from the NHL.

The Blackhawks are guaranteed nothing in this tear-down rebuild, as the beleaguered Buffalo Sabres and Detroit Red Wings can attest.

And the Blackhawks are unwatchable. And we don’t mean boring, though the Bedard novelty is wearing off and the roster is loaded with stopgap veterans who are essentially just passing through, merely laundry for fans to root for. No, the Blackhawks are literally unwatchable for a huge swath of their fans. For subscribers to the two biggest television providers — Comcast and YouTube TV — the hoops you have to jump through in order to watch this team play hockey are laughable. You must purchase a set of rabbit ears (rabbit ears! In the year 2024!). You must have a room with a window that faces downtown Chicago. You must have the rabbit ears high on your wall somewhere. And you must have a night that’s not too windy. Or too rainy. Or too cold. Or too clear? Who knows? There’s a good chance, on any given night, that you’re going to be looking at something that more closely resembles scrambled HBO in the 1980s than a high-definition hockey game. Your other (legal) option is to pay $20 a month to watch the games on your phone or laptop. But just the Blackhawks. If you want the Bulls and the White Sox — those high-flying, can’t-miss squads — you’ll need to pony up $30. A month. It’s gobsmacking.

It’ll take years to know whether Danny Wirtz made the right call in hitching his wagon to Davidson as general manager instead of Eric Tulsky, Mathieu Darche or Scott Mellanby. Despite the excruciating product Davidson has put on the ice the last few seasons, the sheer volume of quality prospects the Blackhawks have acquired in such a short time suggests he might have. But it didn’t take long to realize it was the wrongest of wrong calls for Wirtz to hitch his wagon to a Jerry Reinsdorf enterprise such as CHSN. The billionaires are fighting for carriage fees and meager advertising dollars rather than fighting for their fans. And it could be catastrophic to the bottom line in the long run.

Bad, irrelevant and out of the public eye. If any team should know how dangerous that combination is, it’s the Blackhawks. As Jason Dickinson put it a few weeks ago in an intelligent and passionate plea to put his team in front of as many eyeballs as possible, “It’s never a good thing for any business to just slip into oblivion.” The Blackhawks have been there before, just 20 years ago, and it took a miraculous confluence of talent led by Kane and Toews, and a massive influx of money from Rocky Wirtz to recapture the city’s imagination and take over the hockey world.

These days? Hell, the Blackhawks don’t even do fan giveaways anymore. Last year, there was a towel day and a scarf day. That’s it. This year? Even less. It’s been years since the last bobblehead was handed out before a Blackhawks game. Fans notice. Fans mention it. A petty grievance? Sure. But also a telling one. Either the Blackhawks don’t want to spend the money, or their advertising partners don’t. Neither is a good sign. Crowds are thinning again, back to pre-Bedard levels. And they’re quieter than ever. There’s so little energy in the building these days, so little enthusiasm, so little noise. You can hear every skate carving its way through the ice echoing throughout the league’s biggest arena. And who can blame fans for disengaging when the Blackhawks are doing so very little to engage them?

The one thing the Blackhawks do have is Bedard, and thank the hockey gods for that. Bedard is so good (don’t believe the naysayers, the kid will be fine) and so popular among young fans (a weekend practice at Fifth Third Arena sounds like a Taylor Swift appearance) that he might be able to single-handedly keep this team at least a little relevant as it wanders through the wilderness for another season or two or three or four. It’s a lot to ask of the second-youngest player in the league, but he’s pretty used to it by now. He seems singularly built for the task. He’s just 19, but there might never have been a Blackhawks player more important to the team’s on-ice and off-ice fate.

As for Richardson, he didn’t exactly help any of this. Nice guy, tried hard. Developing Bedard into the superstar he’s destined to become was his No. 1 priority. Really, it was his only priority from an organizational standpoint. And Richardson deserves some credit for Bedard’s improved defensive awareness in his second season. But the coach’s constant line shuffling hurt Bedard more than it helped him, and now you have to hear the words “sophomore slump” every time a national pundit invokes Bedard’s name. Richardson’s seemingly random benching of former MVP Taylor Hall and his insistence on keeping Kurashev in the top six only made things worse.

Like his predecessor, Jeremy Colliton, Richardson is a good man who might be a good coach in a better situation. To his credit, Richardson owned his mistake after scratching Hall without first talking to the veteran. He was honest and forthright with players and with the press, rarely jerking fans around like so many coaches do. He was a modern coach, a progressive thinker who learned how to get through to Gen Z players through long talks with his daughter, a high-school teacher.

The Blackhawks have been far more competitive this season after Davidson’s veteran shopping spree over the summer — leading, tied or within a goal in the third period in all but one of their 26 games. But all coaches have a shelf life, especially when they’re not winning. There were rumblings that some Blackhawks players had grown weary of Richardson, and perhaps interim coach Anders Sorensen — so influential in the development of Alex Vlasic, Wyatt Kaiser and now Frank Nazar — can get more out of these Blackhawks. Or, at least, the Blackhawks who matter, the Blackhawks who’ll be here four years from now. It seems inevitable (and logical) that the Blackhawks will try to sign a veteran coach after two straight first-timers — names such as Gerard Gallant, Bruce Boudreau and Jay Woodcroft, among many others, are out there — but maybe the 49-year-old Sorensen proves to be the right guy, after all. That answer’s a long way off. Just like hope and excitement are.

The Blackhawks are fading from the public consciousness, and there’s no easy way back. No, there will be no meaningful hockey in Chicago this spring. Yet again. Probably won’t be for a while.

Not that anybody would be able to watch, anyway.