Just how dearly will the Chicago Blackhawks miss Connor Bedard through injury?

Modified Jan 07, 2024 01:11 GMT

On Friday night, Connor Bedard, the leading scorer for the Chicago Blackhawks, carried the puck in the New Jersey Devils' zone. After cutting through two players, he was hit by Brendan Smith. Immediately, Bedard was seen grabbing his face and exiting the game without returning as the Blackhawks lost 4-2.

Although it was the team's fifth straight defeat, more bad news followed when the team announced that the youngest All-Star in NHL history was now on the IR with a fractured jaw.

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Considering that the 31st-ranked Blackhawks (11-26-2) are struggling to stay out of the league's basement, their job got much tougher without Bedard, who has 33 points in 39 games.

Connor Bedard and the Blackhawks have faced nothing but adversity in 2023-24

After winning the NHL Draft Lottery in the spring, the Blackhawks were busy in the offseason, acquiring veteran players like Taylor Hall, Nick Foligno, and Corey Perry to help Connor Bedard transition to the NHL.

However, this season has been a disappointment on and off the ice, with Hall leaving in mid-November for knee surgery. Then, Perry was cut from the team after inappropriate behavior at a team function, even though the internet would have had you believe it was a much deeper problem involving Bedard and his family.

As if those issues weren't big enough, the team has lost several players to injury, like Andreas Athanasiou, Tyler Johnson, Seth Jones, Taylor Raddysh, and most recently, Anthony Beauvillier and Foligno.

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Besides Bedard, only Phillipp Kurashev has scored more than 20 points (22), with six double-digit players as the club approached 40 games. Meanwhile, only ten skaters (including the two goalies) have a positive plus/minus rating, with only Jason Dickinson skating in more than a few games.

Connor Bedard may have an 11-point cushion over his next teammate in scoring, but he's minus-22 so far, the second worst on the team behind Lukas Reichel, who is minus-24. Overall, the rookie has the fifth worst plus/minus in the NHL behind two players from the San Jose Sharks, his teammate Reichel, and one from the Anaheim Ducks.

Additionally, Bedard is the only skater in the Blackhawks lineup with more than 100 shots on goal, reaching 118 before the injury, 45 more than the next-best shooter, Foligno, who had 73 before his injury.

So far in 2023-24, Chicago has tallied 90 goals, with Bedard accounting for 15 of them, or 16% of the team's lamplighters through 39 games. Furthermore, he has a point in 25 games, missing the scoresheet on 14 occasions, including the most recent game against the Devils.

Interestingly, Bedard has a point in 64% of the Blackhawks games this season, and the team is just 3-9-2 when he doesn't get a point and 8-17-0 when he earns at least a point.

Despite the struggles of everyone in the lineup, including Bedard who continues to adapt to professional hockey, the Blackhawks rely heavily on their young superstar to help his teammates get points and win hockey games. Even though those victories have been hard to come by all season, it is about to get worse.

Considering the Sharks have been the worst team in the NHL all season, the race for the best Draft Lottery odds got much more interesting with Bedard's injury since the Blackhawks only have a three-point cushion over their California rivals.

Although this significant gap in the lineup will force other players to step up, there's a chance that the Blackhawks won't weather the upcoming storm and find themselves sitting at the bottom if and when Connor Bedard returns this season. As the club's heartbeat, there's realistically no way to replace a player of his talent.