What Chicago's Defense Loses in the Bedard Absence, By the Numbers
Bedard's absence will challenge Chicago's defense as he significantly influenced expected goals against last season. His value extends beyond points.
The conversation around Connor Bedard’s shoulder surgery has mostly been about what Chicago loses offensively, and that makes sense given he put up 75 points in 69 games last season. But the number that says more about what the Blackhawks are actually built on right now is a defensive one, and it is easy to miss because it is not a counting stat on a scoreboard.
The number underneath the points total
With Bedard on the ice last season, Chicago allowed 3.60 expected goals against per 60 minutes. That is a rate stat, not a box-score line, and it measures the quality and volume of chances an opponent generates while a specific player is out there, not just the goals that happened to go in. For a teenager still being built into a two-way centre, a controlled number like that is a meaningful marker of what the Blackhawks were becoming defensively with him in the middle of the ice.
Take him out of the lineup and that number does not simply disappear from the equation. Somebody else inherits those defensive-zone draws, those matchups against the other team’s top options, and those shifts against the pace Bedard’s line was setting. Chicago’s coaching staff will spend training camp trying to figure out who does that job in his absence, and the honest answer is probably nobody does it as well.
Why this matters more in October specifically
The NHL’s expanded 84-game slate starts earlier in the calendar than in past seasons, and Bedard’s surgery keeps him out for the first stretch of it. That means the games affected most by his absence are not scattered evenly across an 84-game schedule. They are concentrated at the front of it, during the exact window when a young team’s structure is least settled and most vulnerable to being tested.
A rebuilding roster without its best two-way centre for the first month is not just an offensive problem in that stretch. It is a defensive one too, and it shows up in exactly the kind of underlying numbers that do not make a highlight package but do show up in how many good chances Chicago is giving up while everyone tries to figure out the lineup without him.
The real evaluation window
None of this means Chicago’s structure collapses without one player. Teams absorb injuries to important players every season and survive the stretch. But the 3.60 figure is a reminder that Bedard’s absence is not purely an offensive story about missed points, and evaluating Chicago’s October play requires looking at both sides of the puck, not just how many goals the Blackhawks are not scoring without him.
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