Richards had 3 options while Callahan was here, if he has been unhappy with Callahan's leadership.
a) tell Callahan in person. Approach him in a good spirit, Callahan would have to be an idiot to turn down his advise.
b) if Callahan doesn't change his stance, tell the coach to ask him to be a bit more vocal.
c) IF and only IF a) and b) fail and he felt that a louder captain would spark the team: talk to the media.
He did option d): Wait until Callahan leaves town and throw a hissy fit via media. To me, that's not okay.
Richards hardly threw a hissy fit. And those are far from the only options and not necessarily the best. If Cally's strength is lead by example, that's true of a lot of captains and it works just fine, because other players can fill in and be vocal. And that doesn't even need to fall on captains: it can come from anywhere, even a backup goalie or limited ice time fourth liner. And Richards was asked if the leadership was affected and I don't think his response, while long-winded, was anything horrific:
"There hasn’t been much of a change at all in the dynamic. Off-ice, there are some issues that we have to make sure are being taken care of, but as far as the team goes, we have enough guys here who are comfortable with taking a leadership role and understand what that means.
Things that have to be said will still get said. I’m not taking anything away from Cally, but he was pretty young and not that vocal. It’s not like he was 38 and had been in the league for 18 years, so everybody was looking to him to listen to what he had to say. We have other guys here who know what to say and when to say it.
I don’t want to make it sound like we don’t miss him. What he did on the ice, you can’t replace. It’s just that nothing is really going to change in the way we approach things in the room."
It's a long-winded response, but nothing major either way imo. Nor do I know the exact questions he was asked and how many of them. I do know first hand the press can twist the **** of out of things, so I take any quotes that I don't see all questions and all responses with my own eyes with a massive grain of salt.