The Chicago Blackhawks can win games under Jeff Blashill. They’ve played and looked better than they have in the past few seasons. There is, of course, a Connor Bedard effect to all that, but that was always going to be the case. The Blackhawks needed Bedard to be an elite player for them to someday be an elite team. The first 20 games of this season showed that potential.
That’s the good news. There is hope for the future.
Now, for the bad news, at least in terms of the present team, this season is slipping away from the Blackhawks.
As the Blackhawks approach the end of their second set of 20 games, their outlook has changed. Even before Bedard’s shoulder injury, there were more inconsistencies. Whether it was Sam Rinzel being sent to Rockford or Frank Nazar’s offensive slump, the Blackhawks have endured the normal growing pains of a young team. And obviously, when Bedard suffered his injury, their trajectory took a much further dive. Their offense has dried up and their margin for error has become even thinner. They’ve scored three goals in three games, all losses, without Bedard, and they’re still going to have to play a number of games without him.
The standings reflect that. Over the course of the last 15 games, the Blackhawks have a 3-10-2 record. They’ve gone from possessing a 10-5-4 record and being the surprise team of the NHL to having a 13-15-6 record and being much closer to the bottom of the league than the top. Any hope of the Stanley Cup playoffs is fading. The Colorado Avalanche, Dallas Stars and Minnesota Wild are running away with the Central Division. The Wild, the Central’s third-place team, has a 15-point lead on the Blackhawks. The parity of the Western Conference can give the Blackhawks some hope at a wild card. Only three teams in that mix have a points percentage greater than .500. The Blackhawks have to prove soon, though, that they’re capable of winning games without Bedard for that to be realistic. The Blackhawks have a 3 percent chance of making the playoffs and are only higher than the Calgary Flames in The Athletic’s latest projections.
What seems more likely now is the Blackhawks joining the NHL Draft Lottery conversation again. As of Friday, the Blackhawks had the league’s fifth-worst points percentage at .471. Below them are the Vancouver Canucks (.439), Nashville Predators (.455), Flames (.457) and Seattle Kraken (.469). Division opponents, the St. Louis Blues (.472) and Winnipeg Jets (.485), are just ahead of them, too.
While the Blackhawks’ front office was fine with this season going better than expected and not ending up with another top-five draft pick, they might be getting the best of both worlds. On the one hand, Bedard has taken off and the Blackhawks showed they can play good hockey. On the other hand, they could very well be drafting another high-end player. That Florida Panthers’ draft pick isn’t starting to look as promising as it did earlier in the season when the Panthers were struggling.
If the Blackhawks do wind up with another top-five pick, it would be interesting to see whether they’d draft another forward or defenseman. You could probably make a case for both.
With the forwards, Bedard and Nazar are top-six locks. Ryan Greene has shown enough that you can project him as probably the third-line center. It’s too early to gauge what Oliver Moore and Nick Lardis are going to be in the NHL, but how quickly both had success in Rockford was a promising sign for the Blackhawks. A season from now, it’d be surprising if Roman Kantserov, who leads the KHL in goals, and Anton Frondell, who is tied for first in goals among under-23 players in the SHL, aren’t in the NHL. Behind them, the Blackhawks have first-round picks Sacha Boisvert, Václav Nestrašil and Marek Vanacker, who are expected to turn pro in the next one to two years. Do the Blackhawks have enough elite forwards? Maybe. Time will tell.
The forwards emerging at the top of the 2026 NHL Draft are Tynan Lawrence, a 6-foot center in the USHL, Ivar Stenberg, a 5-11 winger in Sweden, and Gavin McKenna, a 5-11 winger in the NCAA. Lawrence would be the ideal fit for the Blackhawks with his skating and competitiveness. Stenberg and McKenna might be too similar to what the Blackhawks already have in their system. It might also come down to where the Blackhawks are drafting. If they’re fifth and McKenna is still on the board, that’s a different story than if they’re picking first.
As for the defenseman, the Blackhawks did approach building their team by prioritizing defense first. In Kyle Davidson’s first draft as general manager, he took defensemen Kevin Korchinski and Rinzel with two of his three first-round choices. Two years later, he opted for defenseman Artyom Levshunov over forward Ivan Demidov. Davidson also locked up defenseman Alex Vlasic on a six-year deal. Wyatt Kaiser, 23, and Louis Crevier, 24, have also continued to improve and seem as if they could be part of the future. Do the Blackhawks have enough there? Rinzel was incredible last season. The Blackhawks are hopeful to get him back to that form. Levshunov is a work in progress, but he’s handling more NHL ice time and opportunity well enough at 20. The Blackhawks still believe in Korchinski’s potential and are willing to be patient with his development. Most people would say the Blackhawks have enough there.
But the Blackhawks’ internal chatter may not be the same as the external. Maybe they see drafting another defenseman early as insurance or having depth further down the pipeline. There are a lot of highly-touted defensemen in this draft. The Athletic’s Corey Pronman’s latest draft rankings include five defensemen in his first eight players. There are only three forwards in his top two tiers. The top defensemen are Keaton Verhoeff, who Pronman has as the second-best player, Alberts Smits, Carson Carels, Chase Reid and Daxon Rudolph. Whether or not the Blackhawks go with a defenseman early is unknown, but you can expect them to take a defenseman somewhere in the first or second round. Outside of Levshunov, the Blackhawks haven’t drafted a defenseman in the first five rounds in the last three drafts.
Pronman shared his thoughts on what another top-five pick could mean for the Blackhawks. “Tynan Lawrence feels like their type of player,” Pronman said. “He’s a supercharged version of Oliver Moore and would give them an elite young group of centers. Ivar Stenberg or Gavin McKenna would give Bedard a true top offensive talent to play with. Keaton Verhoeff would be the type of premium D talent that feels most ideal to them that they need more of. They have good young defensemen, but other than Levshunov, nobody is really a top-end talent, and Verhoeff is more well-rounded than Levshunov.”
There is always the possibility that the Blackhawks’ season flips again. If Bedard returns in early January, there is still plenty of time for the Blackhawks to get back on track and have the chance to play meaningful games late in the season. They’ve already surprised the league once; maybe they do it again. As long as those top few wild-card teams don’t excel too much, the Blackhawks might be able to remain in the hunt.
It’s just now the odds are starting to grow against them. Behind the scenes, Davidson and his staff are undoubtedly watching a ton of draft-eligible players and preparing for both potential outcomes. Either way, the Blackhawks can probably spin the season as a positive.