Early Career
Born and raised in Murray Harbour, Prince Edward Island. Richards has been friends with Vincent Lecavalier since the age of 14, when they met at Athol Murray College of Notre Dame, a boarding school with an excellent hockey program in Saskatchewan, Canada. They were roommates and soon became good friends as they were both the youngest players on their hockey team. Since then they have gone on to being teammates for the Rimouski Océanic of the QMJHL and Tampa Bay Lightning. Lecavalier was also responsible for suggesting to the Lightning management after they had drafted him to draft Richards.
In his final season with Rimouski, Richards won nearly every honor possible for a Canadian junior player in the QMJHL: he earned the Jean Béliveau Trophy after leading the league with 186 points, as well as the Telus Cup, given to the league's best offensive player; he won the QMJHL and Canadian Hockey League Plus/Minus Awards with a plus-80 mark, and was a First-Team All-Star in both the Quebec circuit and the CHL, as well as the CHL Player of the Year and Leading Scorer. In the postseason, Richards took home both the Guy Lafleur Trophy as MVP of the 'Q' league playoffs, then the Stafford Smythe Memorial Trophy as MVP of the 2000 Memorial Cup, as the Océanic won both the QMJHL playoff title and the CHL national championship.
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