1:43 p.m.: The Blackhawks announced they’ve activated Bedard from injured reserve. They also recalled defenseman Kevin Korchinski and goaltender Drew Commesso from AHL Rockford to account for their game-time decisions tonight. Korchinski, the seventh overall pick in 2022, would be making his season debut if he draws into the lineup. He hasn’t exactly been lighting up the AHL, but has 19 points and a -12 rating in 32 showings for Rockford. Commesso, on the other hand, has been a strong starter with a .909 SV% and 2.72 GAA in 19 games.
12:00 p.m.: The Chicago Blackhawks will have their lineup star back from injury when they host the Washington Capitals on Friday night. Connor Bedard confirmed that he will return to the lineup after missing the last 12 games due to a shoulder injury to Ben Pope of the Chicago Sun-Times. Bedard skated on the top power-play unit at Friday morning’s practice.
Bedard was injured in the final second of Chicago’s Dec. 12th loss to the St. Louis Blues. He was on a scoring tear before his injury, with five goals and 11 points in his last seven games. Those marks brought Bedard up to 19 goals and 44 points in 31 games on the season. That ranked the Blackhawks youngster third in points and fourth in goals in the NHL.
Naturally, Chicago hit a skid once Bedard fell out of the lineup. Their average goals per game fell from 2.9 to 2.1 over their remaining eight games in December, leading to a 1-6-1 record to end 2025. Surprisingly, the young roster snapped out of that struggle in the New Year. Chicago is currently riding a four-game win streak, capped off by a 7-3 win over the Blues on Wednesday. That win was spurred by young forwards Oliver Moore, Nick Lardis, Landon Slaggert, and Ryan Greene.
With that quartet now clicking down the lineup, Chicago will be in a perfect position to add their top scorer back to the lineup. Bedard spent most of his time next to Greene and Andre Burakovsky prior to his injury. That line outscored opponents 13-to-6 at even-strength, the most of only four Blackhawks lines with a positive goal-differential. The chances that Bedard returns to that line on Friday could be slim, though, as Greene has taken on the second-line center role with Frank Nazar also injured.
Chicago will need to spread their depth after forwards Nick Foligno and Ilya Mikheyev, goaltender Arvid Soderblom, and head coach Jeff Blashill all missed Friday’s morning skate. The team isn’t yet sure which of those four will be available for Friday night’s game, per Charlie Roumeliotis of WGN Radio. The four seem to have fallen victim to a flu bug making its way through the Blackhawks locker room right now. The injury-ridden Blackhawks have two extra forwards – Sam Lafferty and Landon Slaggert – but had to call upon famous emergency backup goaltender Scott Foster to backup at practice. They would be eligible for an emergency recall should they need to fill an additional spot.
Should Blashill need to sit on the side, Chicago would likely ask Anders Sorensen to fill the head coach spot. Sorensen coached the AHL’s Rockford IceHogs from 2022 to 2025, then earned a promotion to an interim head coach role partway through last season. He remains with Chicago as an assistant coach this year.
Hopefully he will not be a negative in the Hawks 2026 perfect record
We love Foster – keep in mind he’s never lost a game!
link to youtube.com
How did Soder, who hasn’t play since Sunday injury himself !
Flu, Reading is a skill. Unless it wasn’t in there when you posted it. In which case I say ooops! LOL
It wasn’t there when I posted it.. Read elsewhere allot of players have the flu.
I doubt Sorensen would be tabbed HC. Peca would probably get the nod IMO. We don’t even know if they are going to play the game anyway. The Bulls game got cancelled last night because of condensation on the court and they said the ice was melting underneath from the humidity. The game might end up being Water Polo from what I was hearing last night. Just when I thought again that I’d seen everything I saw a basketball game rained out indoors. Awesome.
They need to send someone down then no? Puckpedia hasn’t made these updates but they were at 21/23 so this would seem to put them one over the active limit. Wouldn’t mind seeing Korch get some time to see if he’s been able to improve his 2 way game much.
Del Mastro went down. He hasn’t played a game in awhile So they were always going to make the Korchinski move. Commesso is an emergency P/U so no move necessary.
They are one over but I believe you can be one over if the exceedance is a goalie on emergency recall. Vegas was in a similar situation a couple of weeks ago and was one over for a game
Thanks for the education! I forgot about Bedard.