Rookies at Wrigley, Gajan’s Memory, Scouting Seattle, Domi to Toronto, and Other Blackhawks Bullets – Bleacher Nation | Chicago Sports News, Rumors, and Obsession

Connor Bedard and most of the rest of the Blackhawks’ 2023 draft picks were at the Cubs game on Sunday night. After a long, rainy day and a game starting hours later than it was supposed to, the Cubs scored four times in the bottom of the ninth to tie the game. Unfortunately, they lost in the tenth. Still a great night for Bedard and his new, future teammates.

• Hey! Do you remember this ridiculous goal from Bedard at the World Juniors?

• Well, the goaltender who was on the wrong end of Bedard’s heroics is Adam Gajan — yup, the same Adam Gajan who was drafted in the second round by the Blackhawks. Ben Pope asked him about that goal, and becoming Bedard’s future teammate. This is a terrific story. And apologies for Adam for the video but it’s worth watching a million times because dear lord the dangles…

• This past season, the Blackhawks had three of the organization’s top prospects — Kevin Korchinski, Colton Dach and Nolan Allan — playing together for the second half of the season with the Seattle Thunderbirds in the WHL. On Sunday, Cal Filson tweeted that he — like the three players he worked with this past season — is taking his talents to the Blackhawks. Filson is moving from the director of player personnel for the Thunderbirds to being an amateur scout for the Blackhawks.

• How about a streetside workout in Las Vegas. With random people picked out of the crowd to participate. And one of the random people is future Hall of Famer Jaromir Jagr?!? I’m not going to put this on the same level of “dude!” as the guy not recognizing the general manager of a division rival just before the draft, but this is still pretty hilarious. Jagr is 51 and still playing professionally in Europe.

• It appears there will be no second season in Chicago for Max Domi. After a lot of talk about him betting on himself and winning because he had a terrific season with the Blackhawks and Stars, he’s taking the same one-year, $3 million deal he signed with the Hawks last summer. This is clearly an opportunity over dollars signing for Domi, who’s a marvelous person in the room.

• This begs the question, however: how are the Leafs still spending money?

• The Minnesota Wild acquired a guy with some rings at home on Sunday evening. Tampa is retaining 20 percent of Pat Maroon’s cap hit in a cost-cutting trade. The worse the Bolts are, the better the position of the first-round pick the Blackhawks own in the 2024 draft (unless it’s top 10 overall, in which case the pick would move to ’25 unprotected).

• The Alex DeBrincat Festival in Ottawa is really heating up. Fans and media are getting after each other about what the appropriate course of action is for the organization to take with a player for whom they paid a No. 7 overall pick and a second-rounder just 12 months ago. My take on the back and forth and quoted action in the tweet below: they’re all right to an extent, but Pierre Dorion played himself when he paid what he did last summer. The Blackhawks got a sweet deal, and the Sens are now backpeddling in a race they are likely to lose. Dorion feels compelled to replace the assets he traded to get DeBrincat, but he’s not getting a top-ten pick for a 27-goal scorer. The only way he feels he is going to get max value in a trade is with a team that is allowed to negotiate a long-term deal with DeBrincat (see the LA Kings and Pierre-Luc Dubois). The problem: the list of teams that DeBrincat wants and that might be interested in DeBrincat apparently don’t line up. So… oops.

• Finally, the Cubs came all the way back from down four in the ninth inning last night to force extra innings… only to lose. But let’s take a moment to stay excited about Christopher Morel!