Three Chicago Blackhawks storylines to watch for next season.
Every season, the NHL has many “storylines” that capture our attention and nourish our collective imaginations. The Blackhawks will have plenty of storylines next season as Connor Bedard and his squad strive to foster a winning culture and make progress in their reconstruction.
What is an NHL storyline? I believe that clarifying this right away will be beneficial to the purpose of this post. An NHL narrative is a compelling pattern, tale, or theme that may be noticed throughout the regular season.
Last year’s themes featured Connor McDavid and Nikita Kucherov attempting to become just the third and fourth players in history to earn 100 assists in a season, as well as which bad team would win the Macklin Celebrini sweepstakes.
There will be several stories for the 2024-2025 Chicago Blackhawks. Here are three that I believe are particularly fascinating…
Connor Bedard’s sophomore season
This may seem apparent, but everyone will be watching intently next season to see how the now-19-year-old (happy birthday, child!) superstar can build on his amazing rookie season. Will he experience the dreaded sophomore slump? Will he defy expectations and score more than 100 points this year?
In any case, Bedard will be watched and discussed since he is now officially one of the NHL’s new faces.
An underappreciated factor to monitor in Bedard’s second season will be how he makes use of a much superior Blackhawks roster. It’s highly possible that Bedard will start next season on a line alongside Teuvo Teravainen and Tyler Bertuzzi.
That would be a massive improvement over any line he used at any stage last season. So, the issue is: can he capitalize on this flood of new talent? It would be interesting to observe early in the season if Bedard defers to his teammates and tries to pass them the puck, or whether he wants to establish himself by taking more shots.
I want to perform a “points prediction” later this summer, so I won’t predict Bedard’s end-of-season point total right now.
However, I would admit that I am probably on the cautious side of the game. Yes, the roster has improved significantly, but even a vastly improved Blackhawks club may struggle to finish higher than 27th in the league standings.
So, in terms of monitoring Bedard, I’ll be interested to see if he’s maturing into the player we all expect. In other words, even if the club has not yet reached the playoffs, is Bedard consistently the greatest player on each team? Is he taking over games? How many multipoint games does he have? These details will help me determine whether Bedard is genuinely taking the next step in 2024-2025.
