Connor Bedard was hurt on Dec. 12, and the shoulder injury came in the final second of a physical faceoff with Brayden Schenn in St. Louis. Months later, the Blackhawks are back in the conversation around Bedard’s season, with Macklin Celebrini on the other side of the comparison when Chicago meets San Jose in blackhawks vs sharks.
Before the injury, Bedard had looked like one of the league’s most efficient scorers through his first 31 games. He trailed only Nathan MacKinnon, Connor McDavid and Nikita Kucherov in points per game, and he was tied with Celebrini at 44 points, even though Celebrini had played one more game. The two were also even in the little things that can tell you how complete a young star is becoming: both were plus-8 and both were winning 47 percent of their faceoffs. Bedard had four more goals than Celebrini through that stretch, while Celebrini had four more assists.
Bedard’s numbers still matter because they show how high the ceiling has been even in a season interrupted by pain. He has 30 goals this season, and after Saturday night’s 4-2 win over the Seattle Kraken he had 71 points through 64 games. He set up his 40th assist in that game, then added his 41st in the same night. Celebrini entered Monday with 41 goals and 106 points, a breakout total that gives the matchup a clear storyline without needing to force one. Chicago, meanwhile, sat 31st in the standings after another trade-deadline sell-off.
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The larger problem for Bedard is not that he has disappeared. It is that the shoulder injury and the stretch around it have kept him from sustaining the level he showed early. In the eight games before the Seattle win, he had two goals and two assists. The Blackhawks had also gone through an 11-game stretch averaging fewer than two goals per game after a strong run in the first half of March, which left too much on Bedard’s stick and too little around him.
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He did not dress up the reality after Saturday’s morning skate in Seattle. “You never want to get hurt,” Bedard said. “You always want to play as many games as you can. But that’s not always going to be how it goes. I try not to look back at it too much.” That is the season in one answer: the production is real, the injury mattered, and the rest of the schedule now asks whether Bedard can finish with the same force he showed before Dec. 12.
