Connor Bedard’s left shoulder surgery has put a hard timeline on his return, and the Blackhawks aren’t sugarcoating it. Team physician Dr. Michael Terry said Bedard “underwent successful surgery to repair his left shoulder” and that the expected recovery window is “an approximate timeline of four months.”
That means Chicago will be without its star center well into the season. Four months from now would land in mid-November, which puts Bedard on track to miss training camp, the preseason and at least part of the regular season. With the NHL shifting to an 84-game schedule and games set to begin in September for the first time ever, the Blackhawks could be about 13-14 games into the year by the time he’s ready to return.
The injury surfaced Thursday afternoon during Bedard’s practice session in Vancouver. Ryan McGregor, host of postgame show Blackhawks conversation, posted on X that Bedard left practice holding his left shoulder in a way that “closely resembled the incident in December.”
That earlier shoulder issue was on the right side and cost Bedard 12 games. This one is different, and the recovery window is longer. Bedard also missed 14 games in his rookie season because of a fractured jaw.
The timing adds another layer, because Bedard and the Blackhawks still have not reached a contract extension. The deal is expected to make him the highest-paid player in franchise history.
Even so, this injury should stay out of the negotiation conversation. Anything else would be a bad look for the team, especially with Bedard set to miss part of his first regular season under a new contract.
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The move that really changes the temperature, though, is the arrival of Bowen Byram, who came over in a trade and immediately became the most meaningful addition of the group. Even with that kind of upgrade, the broader reaction around the team is easy to understand: Chicago did real work, but it still feels like the sort of summer that leaves fans wondering whether the front office had bigger swings in mind and simply found the market too expensive, too thin or too hard to sell. [Read more 🡒]