Blackhawks star rookie Connor Bedard underwent surgery on Monday to repair his fractured jaw, Daily Faceoff’s Frank Seravalli reports. Bedard will be sidelined between six and eight weeks as a result of the procedure and will miss next month’s 2024 NHL All-Star Game in Toronto. The Blackhawks later confirmed the timeline.
The Blackhawks already placed Bedard on injured reserve last weekend, but he’ll miss far more than the minimum seven days required for an IR stay. The 2023 first-overall pick sustained the injury on an open-ice hit from Devils bruiser Brendan Smith last Friday.
Bedard, still just 18, has bar-none been the Blackhawks’ best offensive player in his first NHL campaign. The team is on pace for only 24 wins and 52 points at the halfway mark of the season, but Bedard has still managed a team-leading 15 goals, 18 assists and 33 points in 39 games while leading Chicago forwards with an average ice time of 19:04. His longer-term injury is reminiscent of Oilers superstar Connor McDavid, who was sidelined for 37 games during his rookie 2015-16 campaign after a big hit from then-Flyers defenseman Brandon Manning.
It will be an extremely tough go for the embattled Blackhawks without Bedard’s services, which could take them up to the March 8 trade deadline. Taylor Hall is done for the season, while Andreas Athanasiou, Anthony Beauvillier, Nick Foligno, and Tyler Johnson are all sidelined longer-term with injuries. It’s forced them to dress a first line composed of Philipp Kurashev, recent trade pickup Rem Pitlick, who’s spent the entire season in the AHL up to this point, and Taylor Raddysh. For a team already sitting near the very bottom of the league, things will get worse before they get better.
In terms of an All-Star Game replacement for Bedard, the league could look to send defenseman Seth Jones to Toronto. Chicago’s highest-paid defender is currently on injured reserve with an upper-body injury, but he’s returned to practice and will likely be cleared to play before the festivities in early February. Jones has no goals and 11 assists in 27 games this year, averaging over 25 minutes per game and posting a respectable -5 rating on a poor defensive team.
The league is punching the air right now, they were banking on Bedard to bring attention to their comically bad all star events.
The announce crew last night seemed to think Jason Dickinson (having a career year, albeit in a mediocre career) would be Bedard’s replacement at the ASG.
I stopped watching ASG stuff years ago so I have no further way of protesting how bad and pointless this year’s game appears to be, but…man.
I will once again point out that instead of putting forth the ABSOLUTE WORST version of the sport of hockey on the most barren sports weekend of the non-summer year…what if they had great matchups with top teams or did the Stadium series games or literally anything but the wretched ASG?
It’s hard to put a finger on which ASG is the worst in sports but Hockey has to be in the top 2. I don’t watch any of them and to be perfectly honest I wouldn’t have watched even if Bedard would of been there. They’ll probably have him there for the skills competition but that’s really a joke too. Having a game in Football makes no sense as injuries are a part of any football game. Nobody plays any defense in the NBA and in the ASG it’s a bigger joke. Baseball used to be the best but the players have no pride anymore so it doesn’t really matter. They can do away with all of them as far as I’m concerned. The players that can use the rest are the ones stuck playing.
All-Star Games mattered (some) fifty years ago, when the players were all broke anyway and liked that extra $$. But gimmick it up however you like, it’s still a meaningless game, how do you expect players to have “pride” for amorphous conferences or divisions, and by the bye, the risk of serious injury. (Ray Fosse, anyone?)
I’d go a step farther and say the ASG’s money used to go into the players retirement fund. And when the players were broke like you said. But they all make a million dollars a year now and there’s so much money in the game that the ASG matters the least because if features the players making the most. Think Ohtani gives a crap about the ASG when he’s getting 700 million plus endorsements? I doubt it.
How about a week long tournament of scrambled 32 teams, each made up from NHL players. Computer could generate the new team’s rosters from the pool, and let these teams play each other for a week. Do the same for the bench coaches. A real scramble tournament.
The All Star stuff they do now, looks like a relaxed and fun time for the players to yuck it up with each other. Maybe they look forward to it, hope so because the fans don’t get much out of it as it is. I bet most of the non all star players deeply appreciate being home for a few days and getting a break.