While most of the hockey world is gearing up for the second round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs, teams that have already been eliminated from the postseason are getting ready to send their best skaters to the IIHF World Championships, scheduled this year to start on May 15 and be played to the end of the month. For the Chicago Blackhawks, that list includes Wyatt Kaiser, Sam Lafferty, Oliver Moore, and Anton Frondell.
But on Friday, insider Elliotte Friedman reported that Connor Bedard won’t be joining that list. He said that Bedard was told the best thing for next season was to skip the event, rehabbing the shoulder injury he suffered mid-season to get back to full strength.
It’s interesting that we had to wait until now to find out that Bedard wasn’t exactly at 100%. He suffered a shoulder injury at the end of a loss to the Blues on Dec. 12, missing 12 games. His scoring was down by his standards when he returned, notching three goals in 11 games in January. But the Blackhawks brought Bedard back knowing that he wasn’t full-strength, even after they were eliminated from playoff contention.
Bedard will be fine by the start of next season, but this decision is perhaps the biggest indictment on the prestige of the World Championships. It’s no secret that the IIHF event is losing steam compared to best-on-best events like the 4 Nations Face-Off or the 2026 Olympics. Worlds have been shuffled out of focus, especially when the NHL postseason is still ongoing. After all, Worlds teams don’t select from the world’s best players—they select from the world’s best available players.
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Bedard’s decision shows where the Worlds sit in the modern hockey hierarchy. He was healthy enough to return for a non-playoff Blackhawks season, but once the NHL season ended, the World Championship was still not important enough to override rehab and injury management. Would he have been playing if this was the Olympics? Certainly. If it was the 4 Nations Face-Off? Not as likely, but not out of the question.
The point is that the IIHF World Championship is not dead, and it’s still packing buildings in Europe. But it’s not the center of the hockey world that it may have once been in non-Olympic years. Bedard is the latest in a long string of recent opt-outs, like Jacob Markstrom, Brayden Schenn, Quinn Hughes—not to mention Bedard last year, so the decision is not unprecedented, which is exactly the point. The tournament is no longer a priority, and Bedard’s decision may be the nail in the coffin.
