Season Review #31: Chicago Blackhawks — Bedard's Leap, the Deadline Reset, and the Most Loaded Prospect Pool in Hockey

He missed thirteen games, still hit thirty goals and seventy-five points, and was named alternate captain at twenty years old after the veterans left. The Blackhawks finished thirty-first. They also finished with the best prospect pool in the league. Hold the contradiction. It's intentional.

By Pucky Editorial · May 2026 · 2025–26 Season Review Series

The number that matters most from the Chicago Blackhawks' 2025-26 season is not their win total (29), their point total (72), or their league position (31st). Those numbers are the cost of building something. The number that matters is 13, as in 13 goals per 60 minutes of ranking, which is where Chicago sat offensively before December 12th, when Connor Bedard's shoulder gave way. Before that injury, the Blackhawks were not a bottom-three team. They were a team climbing faster than anyone had a right to expect, with a 20-year-old centre putting together the most complete stretch of play of his young NHL career.

Then the shoulder happened. He missed 13 games. The team went from the promising fringes of relevance to the familiar depths. When Bedard returned, the momentum that had been building dissipated in the way momentum does when a team's generational talent goes from 20 minutes a night to a hospital bed. They finished 72 points. Last year was 61. The improvement is real. The gap to the playoff line is still enormous. Both things are true simultaneously, and both are features of a rebuild that has been architected with more deliberateness and more conviction than almost any other in the league right now.

On March 6, the Blackhawks traded Nick Foligno, Connor Murphy, Jason Dickinson, Colton Dach, and Ilya Mikheyev. Five veterans out the door. Nine picks in the first two rounds of the next two NHL Drafts in their back pocket. Bedard was named alternate captain at twenty years old, the youngest in the franchise since Jonathan Toews was given the captaincy at twenty-one. Jeff Blashill called it his season's most meaningful moment. "He's earned it with his commitment to winning hockey," Blashill said. "He's very, very competitive. He works hard every day." That sentence is the Chicago Blackhawks' 2025-26 season in a single quote.

Three Distinct Phases, And Only One of Them Looked Like 31st Place

Phase 1, October to December 11 Promising · Top-15 offensively before the injury

Nobody predicted the Blackhawks would open the season playing offensive hockey competitive enough to rank 13th in the league at 2.53 goals per 60 minutes before December. The roster construction heading in was exactly what it looked like: young talent being developed around Bedard, veteran bodies providing structure while the prospects matured. The expectation was a loss total somewhere between last year's 46 and a modest improvement. What arrived instead was a Bedard operating with genuine top-ten-in-the-league urgency, faster, more defensively engaged, more willing to absorb hits to make plays, and more capable of converting in the moments that determined whether games were winnable.

Bedard had worked on his skating all summer rather than going to the World Championships. The difference was visible from the first week. He was drawing defensive attention in a way that created space for Tyler Bertuzzi to have the best season of his career. Frank Nazar was asserting himself as a legitimate NHL player. Ryan Greene, a second-round pick from 2022 who had cracked the NHL roster out of training camp and played 81 of 82 games, was leading all rookies in scoring, which precisely nobody had predicted in September. The wins weren't piling up, but the competitive quality was better than the standings suggested. Then December 12 arrived.

Phase 2, December 12 to February Collapse · 13 games without Bedard · Team reverts to mean

A shoulder injury on December 12 sent Bedard to the sidelines for 13 games. The effect was immediate and stark. Without him, Chicago reverted to the roster it actually was: a team with genuine young talent in development, a capable veteran structure, and nowhere near enough quality to compete with the middle of the Western Conference pack. The offence dried up. The competitive quality of the games dropped. Blashill continued working with his young players and preserving a development environment, but the results deteriorated.

Artyom Levshunov, the 2024 second overall pick, had his own struggles in this period. He was demoted to the Rockford IceHogs in December, a development decision that reflected the difficulty of asking a teenage Belarusian defenceman to carry top-four minutes on a team that desperately needed structure from its back end. Sam Rinzel similarly spent time bouncing between the AHL and the NHL, working through the physical adjustments that the step from NCAA to professional hockey demands. The team floundered. The standings confirmed what everyone watching already knew: the Bedard absence revealed exactly how much infrastructure still needed to be built around him.

Phase 3, March 6 to Season End The Reset · Five veterans out · Youth takes the wheel

The trade deadline was the day the Blackhawks formally completed the transition from "veteran-young blend" to "this is a young team now, full stop." Nick Foligno, traded to the Minnesota Wild to be reunited with brother Marcus, had been the emotional anchor of the room, the presence who mentored Bedard through his first two NHL seasons and provided leadership that a 20-year-old simply cannot provide for himself yet. The Blackhawks sent a heartfelt tribute when he left. It deserved one: Foligno was the right captain for a team navigating a rebuild, a professional who understood his role and executed it without complaint.

What remained after the deadline: Bedard as alternate captain. Bertuzzi as alternate captain. A lineup of young players who had been watching how professionals prepared, competed, and led, and who were now being asked to do those things themselves. The final month of the season became a genuine data set of what the Blackhawks will actually be without the training wheels. What it showed was encouraging. Seven forwards drafted by Kyle Davidson appeared in NHL games this season. The prospect pipeline was not theoretical, it was producing bodies capable of playing meaningful minutes.

Connor Bedard, Year Three, The Leap

First 30-Goal Season. First Point-Per-Game Season. Top-20 NHL Centre at 20 Years Old. And He's Not Satisfied.

30Goals

45Assists

75Points

69Games

89Pt Pace/82 GP

20:52Avg TOI

Year one was promise. Year two was a sophomore slump that generated national conversation about whether the "generational talent" label had been premature. Year three was the answer. Bedard arrived at training camp with improved skating, the off-season work he chose over the World Championships, and a defensive engagement that coaches and scouts had identified as the piece his game most needed. The result was his first 30-goal season, his first point-per-game season, and a performance level that placed him as a top-20 NHL centre before his 21st birthday, a level that most players don't reach until their mid-twenties.

His best stretch came before the December 12 shoulder injury. At that point he was among the league's leading point scorers and producing at a pace comparable to Macklin Celebrini, the 2024 first overall pick who went to San Jose. The shoulder cost him 13 games and a full head of momentum. He returned and still finished at 75 points. Over 82 games, that pace projects to 89 points and 35 goals. 89 points would have ranked him ninth in the league this season in full-season production. He didn't play a full season. He still produced 75.

The leadership question was answered on March 6, when the Blackhawks named him alternate captain after the deadline trades removed the experienced leadership group. He is already the unquestioned franchise leader, the player everything is being built around, and, based on his trajectory, the most likely next 100-point centre in the league when the team around him develops sufficiently to generate sustained zone time and power-play opportunities. He said after the season that he wasn't satisfied. "He may never be satisfied until they win the Stanley Cup," wrote The Hockey News. He is twenty years old. That's the correct level of dissatisfaction for a player in his position.

Who Performed, Who Struggled, Who Surprised

2025–26 Individual Season Grades

The March 6 Sell-Off, What Left, What Arrived, and What It Means

Deal 1, Connor Murphy to Edmonton CHI Win

Murphy (50% retained) → EDM → 2028 2nd-round pick

Murphy was the longest-tenured Blackhawk and the most respected veteran in the locker room. His penalty-killing intelligence and his defensive positioning were genuinely valuable to Edmonton's playoff push, which is why the Oilers paid a second-round pick where most observers thought a third or fourth was the ceiling. At 50% salary retained, Chicago extracted maximum value. Murphy's time in Chicago was always going to end this way: a quality player from a previous era of the franchise, useful for a contender, no longer part of the future in the United Center. The second-round pick joins nine total R1-R2 picks over the next two drafts.

Deal 2, Dickinson + Colton Dach to Edmonton CHI Win, Davidson's Best Deadline Deal

Dickinson + C. Dach → EDM → Andrew Mangiapane + 2027 1st (top-12 protected)

The package Dickinson and Colton Dach brought back surprised the league. Multiple analysts called it an overpay by Edmonton, which means Chicago got full value. Dickinson was a Selke Trophy candidate through his Chicago tenure, a penalty-kill specialist who won half his faceoffs and provided bottom-six structure the organisation could afford to move on from. Colton Dach (younger brother of Kirby) was a complementary piece. In return: Mangiapane (a forward who gets a clean slate in Chicago and provides depth) and a top-12 protected 2027 first-round pick that becomes an extremely valuable asset if Edmonton misses the playoffs next spring. Davidson's best transaction of the rebuild.

Deal 3, Foligno to Minnesota Wild Mutual, Right Move for Both

Nick Foligno (Captain) → MIN → Conditional pick return

Foligno was reunited with brother Marcus in Minnesota, a storyline that overshadowed the hockey transaction. The Wild got veteran leadership and physical presence for their playoff run. Chicago got future assets and the formal beginning of the post-Foligno era. His departure was emotional, the tributes from the organisation and from Bedard specifically were genuine, but inevitable. His two seasons as captain did exactly what Davidson signed him to do: provide the stable environment in which Bedard, Nazar, and the wave of young talent could learn what NHL professionalism looks like. That job was complete. Minnesota needed him more than Chicago did.

The #1 Prospect Pool in the NHL, What That Actually Means

Scott Wheeler at The Athletic released his league-wide prospect rankings on April 8, 2026, and placed the Blackhawks first in the NHL. Not top-three. First. The chief reason, Wheeler noted, was remarkable depth, the Blackhawks could possess the best individual forward, defenceman, and goaltender between any two teams while still trailing Chicago in overall pool quality, simply because Chicago has more legitimate prospects at more positions than any other organisation. That is the specific outcome Kyle Davidson has been engineering through four drafts: not a single transcendent prospect, but a wave of talent deep enough to sustain the organisation through the years when the top picks are graduating into NHL roles.

Chicago Blackhawks, Prospect Pipeline #1 in NHL, The Athletic (Scott Wheeler, Apr 2026)

Note: Connor Bedard, Frank Nazar, Artyom Levshunov, Ryan Greene, and Wyatt Kaiser have been graduated from prospect status. The above list does not include them. Despite graduating five players, this is still the #1 ranked pipeline in the NHL.

What the 2025-26 Season Was and Wasn't

2025–26 Chicago Blackhawks, Team Statistical Leaders

What 2026-27 and Beyond Looks Like

The Blackhawks' summer has three critical items. First, Bertuzzi's UFA status: a career year at 30 raises the question of whether Chicago can retain him on a team-friendly deal, or whether a contender outbids them for the player who led their team in goals. Keeping Bertuzzi gives Bedard his most effective linemate and provides continuity in the one area of the roster (top-six forward play) that actually worked. Losing him creates a production void that Frondell and Lardis are probably two years away from filling.

Second, Levshunov. Year two must be better. The organisation still believes, all the internal messaging is that the demotion was a development decision, not a judgment, but the external clock is ticking on a second-overall pick who hasn't yet imposed himself on NHL games the way his draft position suggested he would. A healthy Makar-style leap from Levshunov, even a partial one, changes the entire defensive picture of the team heading into 2027-28.

Third, and most immediately: the 2026 draft. The Blackhawks hold their own first-round pick. They are open to trading it if the right opportunity emerges. They have the capital to be active. Whether Davidson finds a trade that accelerates the timeline or uses the pick to add another high-ceiling body to a prospect pool that is already the best in the league will say a great deal about whether the rebuild is in "stabilise" mode or "accelerate" mode for the coming year.

The Germany Global Series games this fall will give the league and the hockey world a chance to see what Bedard looks like in year four, what Frondell looks like in his first full season, and what the Blackhawks are actually building toward. The answer is not yet "playoff contender." But the answer is also no longer "team going nowhere." The answer is something rarer and more specific: a rebuild that, if it continues on this trajectory, produces a legitimately terrifying team by 2028. Whether the patience required to get there sustains itself in a market as demanding as Chicago is the only question the draft lottery and the prospect pool cannot answer.