Soderblom Stood Alone All Season. That Cannot Happen Again.
The most damning number from Chicago's 2025-26 campaign has nothing to do with the offense. It isn't the minus-13 ratings scattered across the blue line, or the 9-21 record over the final 30 games, or even the 3-7 death rattle to close the year. It is this: exactly one goaltender—Arvid Soderblom—played meaningful minutes all season. One. The depth chart behind him was empty in any functional sense, and the Blackhawks ran an 82-game NHL schedule with no margin for error in net.
That is not a depth problem. That is a structural failure. Every NHL team absorbs injury, fatigue, and bad stretches across a season. The entire architecture of a two-goaltender rotation exists precisely because no single netminder can carry a full workload without degradation. When Soderblom had a rough stretch, there was nowhere to turn. When the defense in front of him—a unit that bled possession and featured Artyom Levshunov logging nearly 20 minutes a night with a minus-13 rating—made his job harder, there was no reset available. The bottleneck was permanent.
What makes this particularly costly is the timing. Connor Bedard returned from shoulder surgery and produced at a rate that few centers in the league can match—48 points in 38 games, the kind of efficiency that makes a franchise's long-term investment look prescient. Tyler Bertuzzi gave the secondary core real teeth. The forward group, with Kane back in the building and Frank Nazar developing into a genuine contributor, was not the problem. But elite forward production requires a functioning team around it, and a single goaltender operating without a viable partner is a ceiling, not a foundation.
The December collapse told the story plainly. Chicago went 3-11 that month, including a six-game losing streak, and never truly recovered. A team with a real two-goaltender setup can manage a rough patch by rotating the starter out, absorbing a few losses while limiting the psychological and physical toll. Chicago had no such lever to pull. The slide became self-reinforcing: the defense wore down, the goaltender wore down, and the losses compounded.
My read is that this is the offseason priority that deserves more urgency than it's currently getting. The conversation around Chicago has centered—understandably—on Bedard's captaincy, Kane's return, the blue-line additions. Those are the visible moves. But adding a legitimate backup goaltender, or a genuine starter who can push Soderblom for time, is the quiet fix that determines whether next season's roster can actually compete in close games. The Blackhawks have invested heavily in the pieces around the crease. The crease itself remains one injury away from catastrophe.