{"id":385659,"date":"2026-01-01T23:26:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-01T23:26:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/385659\/"},"modified":"2026-01-01T23:26:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-01T23:26:07","slug":"bedard-should-have-been-named-to-team-canada-roster-blackhawks-coach-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/385659\/","title":{"rendered":"Bedard should have been named to Team Canada roster, Blackhawks coach says"},"content":{"rendered":"

CHICAGO — Connor Bedard<\/a> was not named to Team Canada\u2019s roster<\/a> for the Olympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026 on Wednesday, but Chicago Blackhawks coach Jeff Blashill believes the center should have been.<\/p>\n

\u201cFirst off, I have a ton of respect for how hard these decisions are,\u201d Blashill said on Thursday. \u201cHonestly, Canada, the (United States), Sweden — you have a lot of really good players that you\u2019re going to ultimately leave off these teams. The one thing I would say is, I don\u2019t think the rest of the League knows how good of a two-way winning hockey player Connor has become; that\u2019s the one thing, and I don\u2019t know why. Maybe it\u2019s based on previous years, but I don\u2019t think they have a full understanding of how good a winning hockey player he is today as we sit here today.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reason why I know he\u2019s a big-time winning hockey player, when he was in our lineup, we were one point out of the wild card (in the Western Conference), and since then we\u2019re 1-6-1. That\u2019s the impact he\u2019s had. That\u2019s the type of two-way player [he\u2019s become]. You don\u2019t have that impact if you\u2019re just a point-getter; you only have that impact if you\u2019re a true two-way kind of winning player, and that\u2019s what he\u2019s become.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bedard has been out since Dec. 12 when he sustained an upper-body injury with one second left in the third period of a 3-2 loss to the St. Louis Blues while taking a face-off. Blues center Brayden Schenn<\/a> went in for a stick lift and knocked into Bedard, who fell backward to the ice. He was clutching his right shoulder as he headed toward the locker room.<\/p>\n

The 20-year-old still leads the Blackhawks (14-18-7) with 44 points (19 goals, 25 assists) in 31 games. At the time of his injury, Bedard was fourth in NHL scoring behind Colorado Avalanche forward Nathan MacKinnon<\/a>, Edmonton Oilers captain Connor McDavid<\/a> and 19-year-old San Jose Sharks center Macklin Celebrini<\/a>. Those three will represent Canada in Milan.<\/p>\n

Team Canada general manager Doug Armstrong said Wednesday that Bedard\u2019s injury really didn\u2019t affect his chances of making the team.<\/p>\n

\u201cQuite honestly, his name was there to the last second,\u201d Armstrong said. \u201cBut I think the reality is, there\u2019s so many good players, and we just had difficult decisions to make.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bedard skated on Monday for the first time since he was injured, but he did not take any shots on goal. Blashill said Bedard will be reevaluated this month and, once that happens, he\u2019ll have a better idea of when Bedard will return.<\/p>\n

The No. 1 pick at the 2023 NHL Draft, Bedard has 172 points (64 goals, 108 assists) in 181 games.<\/p>\n

Chicago hosts the Dallas Stars on Thursday (8:30 p.m. ET; Victory+, CHSN, SN1).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CHICAGO — Connor Bedard was not named to Team Canada\u2019s roster for the Olympic Winter Games Milano Cortina…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":385660,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-385659","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=385659"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385659\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/385660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=385659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=385659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=385659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}