Bears buzz has Blackhawks dreaming

Posted January 13, 2026 5:09 pm

By Mark Lazerus

Even after a big win on the road, the late-night bus ride to the airport tends to be pretty subdued. The players are emotionally and physically spent, and their mouths are usually too full of greasy food and viscous shakes to do much talking. Earbuds are in, music is up and the focus is on the phones, catching up on texts and (for the more ill-advised) social media.

The short trip from Bridgestone Arena to Nashville International Airport on Saturday night was different. Like just about every other resident of Chicago, the Blackhawks were watching the Bears’ mind-boggling playoff victory over the Green Bay Packers.

“That was fun,” Connor Bedard said. “We were checking the score in between periods. It was 21-3 after the second, so it wasn’t great. But that’s what they do — they come back. It’s been fun for the city, for everyone.”

Literally, almost everyone. The city came to a glorious standstill on Saturday night. It seemed like the entire population of Chicago was watching that football game, the seismic tremors from Soldier Field rippling across the city and deep into the suburbs in every direction. It felt like the North Side in 2016. It felt like the South Side in 2005. It felt like the Bulls in the 1990s.

But mostly, it felt like the Blackhawks not too long ago. The teams that won three Stanley Cups from 2010-2015 absolutely ran this town, with each postseason featuring similarly unforgettable games against hated rivals. On playoff game nights, the Chicago skyline was lit up with the team logo and “GO HAWKS” and similar messages. Buttoned-up business folk were walking to work wearing heavy Blackhawks jerseys in the May and June heat. Every TV in every bar had hockey on. The Chicago Sun-Times had a 12- or 16-page special section the morning after every game.

Nick Foligno was in the league back then, but only Alex Vlasic, a native of the north burbs, truly knows what it was like. And he hated it.

After all, his cousin Marc-Edouard Vlasic was on the San Jose Sharks, so that was his team.

“I wasn’t a Hawks fan at the time, so I remember it being annoying how good they were,” Vlasic said with a laugh. “All my friends just giving me crap for cheering for the Sharks. It’s cool to see the Bears getting that treatment now. It was awesome to see. I’m really hoping we can get back to that.”

Not that any professional athlete really needs any extra motivation, but seeing the city of broad shoulders wrap its arms around its football team in a big Bear hug has only whetted the young Blackhawks’ appetite for the same.

“It definitely has, for sure,” Bedard said. “The pride about sports in the city is very high, and they get very excited about it. That’s a big reason we want to get to the top.”

Back in the early 2010s, the Bears were regular visitors to the United Center for Blackhawks games, and vice versa. There seems to be less crossover now — Blackhawks coach Jeff Blashill knew Bears coach Ben Johnson a little when they were both in Detroit, and quarterback Caleb Williams texted Bedard over the summer “just to say what’s up,” Bedard said — but there’s no escaping the Bears buzz in the city.

“All my buddies, just seeing videos of people going nuts — it only makes us imagine how cool it’ll be for us to be that good at some point, and to be playing Stanley Cup hockey,” Vlasic said. “That’s the goal and the dream. We want to bring that to Chicago.”

These Blackhawks aren’t as loose with their dreams as the previous generation. Patrick Sharp once told me he, Dustin Byfuglien and a few teammates were shooting the breeze over a few beers during the 2007-08 season, idly talking about what it’d be like when they won the Stanley Cup, how the parade might look, what they’d do on their Cup days. There was a cockiness that those Blackhawks had that fueled them, that made them indomitable.

The current group isn’t yet so brazen. Defenseman Wyatt Kaiser, who is not a Bears fan, by the way — “I grew up in Minnesota,” he noted — said the youngsters will occasionally pick veterans’ brains about what the playoffs are like, what winning a championship is like. But, as Vlasic said, they don’t want to “jinx” anything, either. Still, the Bears’ success is an undeniable, tantalizing glimpse of a future that feels a little closer every day.

At the United Center lately, the crowds have been bigger, hotter, louder. Bedard’s leap into megastardom this season has rekindled some of the long-lost excitement around the Blackhawks. They’re faster and more fun to watch, and they’re winning more games. Even as a .500 team, excitement is building.

Monday’s 4-1 loss to the Edmonton Oilers wasn’t the best example, as Bedard fell victim to the stomach bug that’s ravaged the team. His late scratch took much of the air out of the building, and a poor start against the high-octane Oilers didn’t help. But more and more these days, flat games are becoming the exception. And even in this one, as the Blackhawks made a late push, the crowd came roaring to life. The United Center is once again hopping as Blackhawks fans are once again hoping. The promise of the future is dragging fans out of the recent past and into the present.

“We’re seeing it now with the success we’re having, the young guys coming up,” Vlasic said. “There’s definitely a different feeling, and we can definitely feel that vibe and atmosphere. It’s like, hey, in a couple years, we’re going to be a really, really good team.”

And that’s just a tiny taste of what the Blackhawks used to have, and what the Bears have right now. As Kaiser put it, “It’s an awesome sports city — they go crazy here.”

“We’re starting to get that this year; there’s a lot of excitement around our group,” Bedard said. “We just need to keep trying to stack wins and get better and better, then that’ll come, for sure. Especially when the Bears’ season is over — hopefully that’s not till February.”

Game observations

1. The Blackhawks adapted to Bedard’s absence when he missed 12 games with a shoulder injury, but they struggled to find that heavier, grind-it-out game on short notice against Edmonton. They didn’t seem to have their legs at all in the early going, and the Oilers ran roughshod. Only Spencer Knight’s brilliance kept the game within reach.

“My whole take on the game was the first 15 minutes, they dominated us,” Blashill said. “The first five minutes of the second, they took it to us. … Unfortunately, a game isn’t 40 minutes long. It’s 60.”

A pair of strong penalty kills late in the second injected some life into the Blackhawks, and they made a game of it with a solid third period, including Tyler Bertuzzi’s 24th goal of the season (he had 23 in 82 games last year). But it was too little, too late, as Evan Bouchard scored a 180-foot empty-netter and Leon Draisaitl tacked on a late goal for good measure.

2. Anyone who’s ever recovered from the flu or norovirus or any kind of stomach bug knows it takes a few days to start feeling like yourself again and eat normally. Perhaps the Blackhawks’ poor start against Edmonton was understandable.

Then again, Knight was outstanding after being sick enough to miss the last two games.

“There’s your excuse, coming back from being sick — why the hell is he playing so well?” Foligno said.

Still, as much as he hates excuses, Foligno had sympathy for his stricken teammates.

“Everyone faces it,” he said. “It’s a reality, obviously. No one’s Superman here. You’re obviously not going to feel great. But I told guys, ‘The last time you feel great in the NHL is your first game.’ I mean, really … It’s a hard league. It’s a league where you have to find your game, regardless of how you feel.”

3. Teuvo Teräväinen left the game after the first period with an upper-body injury. Blashill wasn’t sure of the severity — “It might be something where he’s OK, it might not be,” he said — but said he’d have an update when the team returns to practice on Wednesday.

4. Rookie defenseman Artyom Levshunov had an almost unfathomable 5-minute, 33-second shift in the second period, thanks to a power play camped in Edmonton’s end, followed by a long stint hemmed in his own, followed by an icing.

“One of the things we’re trying to help the young players (with) is learning how to change,” Blashill said. “There may have been one chance where he could’ve sprinted to the bench, but we have to be careful of that because we don’t want to sprint to the bench, giving up a 2-on-1. … He was a little bit a victim of circumstance on that shift.”

5. Drew Commesso was put in an impossible position on Friday night, thrown into his first NHL start of the season at the last minute behind an illness-ravaged team. Not surprisingly, he ended up on the wrong side of a 5-1 decision against Washington, but answered the call beautifully 24 hours later in Nashville, with a 36-save shutout of the Predators. Once Knight and Arvid Söderblom got over their stomach bugs, Commesso was able to return to Rockford feeling good about himself.

“It’s a really, really difficult spot,” Blashill said. “If you guys could have seen how that all shook down, talking to Spencer (Friday night), whether he could play or not play. Next thing you know, he’s violently vomiting in the bathroom. That was the answer. So (Commesso) gets thrown in there late. It’s a tough spot. So I was real happy we were able to get him right back in there, and he was able to play an excellent game.”