Bedard Is Close. That's the Only Good News Chicago Needs Right Now.

Connor Bedard could play in one of the Blackhawks' next three home games. After a season defined almost entirely by his absence, that sentence does a lot of work.

The numbers make the case plainly. Bedard averaged 1.26 points per game across his 38 appearances before landing on injured reserve — a rate that put him in genuinely elite company. Tyler Bertuzzi, who carried the secondary load as well as anyone could have asked, finished at 0.85 points per game. That gap between the two is not a depth problem you can paper over with roster moves; it is the structural reality of a team built around one exceptional player who wasn't there. Without Bedard, Chicago went 32–58 and finished 27 games behind first place in the Central. The math is not subtle.

What Bedard's return does not fix is also worth naming. Left wing behind Bertuzzi is thin in a way that one healthy center cannot solve, and Patrick Kane has produced well below what a starting right wing should deliver. Frank Nazar, who might have helped stabilize the middle six, is now sitting out a two-game suspension for a check to the head. The roster still has real holes. But those holes look different — more manageable, more addressable — when the player averaging 1.26 points per game is actually in the lineup.

The narrow path to something better runs directly through Bedard staying healthy and the supporting cast holding together around him. That's it. That's the whole plan. It's not a complicated argument, but after a season this long and this broken, simple and concrete is exactly what this team needs.