The Chicago Blackhawks dominated the World Juniors in 2023

The Chicago Blackhawks are a team that has been rebuilding for a couple of years now. Once Kyle Davidson took over the roster following Stan Bowman, things started to move in the right direction in terms of doing things the right way.

He traded off a lot of assets in order to land draft picks and prospects for the future. That is a way to rebuild and get back into a window of sustained success. It isn’t easy because the product on the ice suffers for a year or two but it will all be worth it in the end.

In January, the Blackhawks saw some of their very good prospects playing in the World Junior Championships. Most of them did a very good job of representing their countries in this prestigious tournament.

Chicago sent five prospects to the tournament. The only one that wasn’t on Team Canada was Victor Stjernborg who represented Team Sweden. The former fourth-round pick is hoping to become an NHL player one day.

The Chicago Blackhawks did even better than they thought at the WJC.

Colton Dach was a forward for Team Canada while Kevin Korchinski, Ethan del Mastro, and Nolan Allan played defense for the eventual champions. All of them made a huge impact on the team that won the Gold Medal.

To say that the Blackhawks did well in this tournament would be an understatement. Now, we know that they did even better than we thought following the results of the 2023 NHL Draft Lottery.

Connor Bedard had a legendary tournament as he led everyone in scoring by a lot. In seven games total, he scored nine goals and had 14 assists for 23 points. Now, he is coming to Chicago to join some of his Canadian teammates in the NHL (as long as they make it one day).

After Canada won the Gold, there is the famous picture of him skating around with Dach and Korchinski which is awesome to see. They weren’t even all teammates yet but that picture will now forever mean something.

When Bedard gets to Chicago, there are going to be some crazy expectations for him. It is always hard to live up to these types of things but Bedard has what it takes to do it. The things we’ve seen all year long from him, including the WJC, suggest that he is going to be super elite.