3 Chicago Blackhawks storylines to follow for next season

What is an NHL storyline? I feel that for the sake of this article, it will be useful to clarify that right off the bat. An NHL storyline is an interesting trend, story, or theme that can be observed across the course of the regular season.

For example, some storylines last year included: Connor McDavid and Nikita Kucherov trying to be just the third and fourth players ever to reach 100 assists in a season, and Which terrible team would win the Macklin Celebrini sweepstakes?

There will be a plethora of storylines for the 2024-2025 Chicago Blackhawks. Here are three that I think are the most interesting...

Connor Bedard's Sophomore Season

This one may be obvious, but next season everyone will be watching closely to see how the now 19-year-old (happy birthday kid!) phenom will follow up on his impressive rookie campaign. Will he have the dreaded sophomore slump? Or, will he defy all expectations and break 100 points in the year?

Either way, people will be watching and discussing Bedard, as he is officially one of the new faces of the NHL.

An underrated aspect to watch in Bedard's second season will be how he takes advantage of a much improved Blackhawks roster. It is entirely plausible that next season could open with Bedard on a line with Teuvo Teravainen and Tyler Bertuzzi.

That would be a MASSIVE upgrade from any line he rolled with at any point last season. So, the question will be can he capitalize on this influx of new talent? I will be curious to see early in the year if Bedard defers to his teammates and tries to feed them the puck, or if he attempts to assert himself out of the gate by taking more shots.

I intend to do a "points prediction" at some point this summer, so I won't give my prediction here for Bedard's end-of-season point total.

However, I will say that I am probably on the more conservative side of that game. Yes, the roster is greatly improved, but even a greatly improved Blackhawks team may still really struggle to be much better than, say 27th in the league standings.

So, in terms of watching Bedard, I will be curious to see if he is developing into the player we all expect. In other words, even if the team isn't yet near the playoffs, is Bedard consistently the best player on either team? Is he taking over games? How many multi-point games does he have? These things will indicate to me whether Bedard is truly taking the next step in 2024-2025.