The Chicago Blackhawks are both lucky and unlucky in winning the 2023 Draft Lottery for Connor Bedard.

The Chicago Blackhawks were both lucky and unlucky in winning the 2023 NHL Draft Lottery and then selecting Connor Bedard.

What? How could the Blackhawks being able to choose a generational talent in Bedard be unlucky? Well it's not that they were able to draft him, it's that the timing wasn't great.

After Kyle Davidson took over as general manager in October 2021, the Blackhawks started a dive into a full rebuild that would have probably taken five years or longer. Davidson started trading players to acquire draft assets for younger talent to turn things around in the long-term.

The 2023 draft lottery win came not long after trading Alex DeBrincat and Kirby Dach for draft picks along with not qualifying Dylan Strome as an RFA.

DeBrincat, Dach and Strome were all young, talented forwards who could have helped the Blackhawks improve more quickly after Bedard was drafted. 

Those players would have already had multiple years of playing in the NHL ahead of Bedard and could have pushed the team closer to competing right away.

But we can't overlook the long-term returns the Blackhawks got in three trades.

Chicago didn't have a first-round pick in 2022. Trading DeBrincat to Ottawa brought back the pick to select smooth-skating defenseman Kevin Korchinski (seventh overall) and trading Dach returned the 13th overall pick to grab speedy forward Frank Nazar. 

Acquiring Petr Mrazek as a cap dump from the Toronto Maple Leafs gave the Blackhawks the pick to draft defenseman Sam Rinzel (25th overall), who's developing at the University of Minnesota.

And Mrazek turned out to be terrific last season, making a career-high 53 starts after putting two years of injuries behind him. See story:

Wasting Bedard's Contract?

The Blackhawks may seemingly waste Bedard's rookie contract while the prospects develop alongside him. Given the state the Blackhawks are in, even with bringing in veterans to help, Bedard isn't in a position to help his team leap from rebuilding to contending unlike three notable generational talents before him.

Bedard may not be the first piece, but he is one of the first pieces to arrive in Chicago as an 18-year-old. Lukas Reichel had played 34 games prior to this season, Alex Vlasic had played 21 games, Wyatt Kaiser had played nine games, Korchinski also got his first taste of the NHL this season with Bedard, and Nazar and Landon Slaggert came right out of the NCAA at the end of the season.

These are all players starting their professional careers with little experience and Bedard has as much as any of them. Bedard is one of the first pieces of the puzzle that really accelerated the rebuild, not the final touch to put the Blackhawks in position to compete right away, as was the case with Auston Matthews in Toronto and Connor McDavid in Edmonton.

Matthews was drafted first overall in 2016 and was the last piece to the puzzle for the Maple Leafs to propel them into a playoff spot his rookie season. This was after the team already had Mitch Marner, William Nylander, Morgan Rielly, Zach Hyman, Connor Brown, and Nazem Kadri who were 26 years of age or younger.

The Oilers drafted McDavid first overall in 2015 and it only took one year (McDavid missed half his rookie season with broken collar bone) for the Oilers to make the playoffs. In McDavid's first season, the Oilers already had Taylor Hall, Jordan Eberle, Leon Draisaitl, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Nail Yakupov, Darnell Nurse, and Oscar Klefbom aged 25 and younger.

The generational talent before that was Sidney Crosby, and like McDavid, it took the team one year to then make the playoffs. The difference here: Even though the Penguins had talented young players like Evgeni Malkin, Marc-Andre Fleury, Ryan Whitney, Jordan Staal, Michel Oulette, Colby Armstrong, and Kris Letang (just coming in), Pittsburgh also had strong veterans still around in Hall of Famer Mark Recchi, Sergei Gonchar, Gary Roberts, and John LeClair.

While the Blackhawks had young players like Philipp Kurashev, Reichel, Vlasic, Korchinski, Kaiser and Nazar all play at least a couple of games in the NHL this season, only Kurashev had significant experience as surrounding talent for Bedard. That leaves the Blackhawks in a different position and not ready to make the playoffs by next season was the case in Toronto, Edmonton and Pittsburgh.

The reason I mentioned the Blackhawks wasting Bedard's entry-level contract is because if the team was able to take advantage of a playoff run in one or two seasons with him on that contract, it would allow Chicago to be more competitive right now. Teams that win typically have talented young players on entry-level deals contributing, and Bedard would be a huge one.

The Blackhawks will have to pay Bedard with a big second contract in two more years (after 2025-26), likely before they make the playoffs. A handful of Chicago's young players will be in line for new contracts around the same time as Bedard as well.

Davidson has managed his salary cap space well, but might be limited from adding another piece or two that could be integral to a successful season. The Blackhawks will easily have enough money to pay Bedard, but what about a couple $7+ million AAV players to put the team over the top?

The Blackhawks will be just fine, but with the timing of winning the draft lottery when they did, Bedard and Chicago will have to wait a bit longer than what we've seen in the past from generational talents joining mostly constructed teams.

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