Good news: Connor Bedard returned early from his broken jaw injury. Bad news: it didn’t matter anyways, as the Blackhawks lost to the Penguins at the UC on Thursday night. Better news: At 31 points, the Blackhawks are 4 points worse than the next closest team, meaning, they most likely will have the best chance at getting the number one overall pick in the NHL draft for the 2nd straight year. Does Bedard have a cousin or something?
You certainly can’t gauge how great Bedard is by the Hawks win loss record this year. Besides the fact that he missed a ton of games himself, injuries (and other stuff) has ravaged the Hawks already thin roster this year; any chance we did have of making some noise quickly disappeared. Still, the last time I wrote about this, I talked about the pieces that they have identified to be with the team during this rebuilding period; we do have pieces besides Connor. Yet, let’s not forget how good we expect this kid to be. Just his presence back on the ice made a big difference in the flow of the game. Sure, we didn’t get the 2 points, but seeing him back on the ice is a great thing. We were worried when the injury broke; we had tickets to go see the Hawks on February 21st. Would Connor be back? Yes, yes he IS back, and I’ll get to see him for the first time with my own eyes in person next Wednesday. Now I need to get some tickets for my son and I…
He IS the attraction right now on this Blackhawks team; hopefully we will be adding other “supporting actors”. Getting another number one pick would be helpful. I don’t think it’s like last year though, where there was a clear-cut, slam dunk, no brainer favorite, is there? Now I need to do some draft research? I have zero clue about the upcoming NHL prospects. The only reason I knew last year was because of how great Bedard is, and yes, make no mistake, this kid IS great.
He is a kid though, and will need to grow into that superstar. Coming back from an injury before he was scheduled to is kind of nice. Don’t need to rush back and risk reinjuring yourself, but if that is not likely, then come on. Reminds me a bit of another kid who came back early from an injury… except Bedard will not lead us into the postseason and put up a historic performance in Boston. Not comparing him to MJ by any means, just reminds me of the situation with Mike’s broken ankle in his 2nd year in the league. Hopefully one day we can argue if Connor belongs on that Chicago sports Mt. Rushmore. For now though, long way to go.
But Bedard is back! Some good news in an otherwise pretty blah season for the Hawks, other than, you know… Bedard and all. More, more, more… Let’s Go Hawks!
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