Laurent Brossoit’s first year with the Blackhawks hasn’t gone well, to say the least. Signed to a two-year, $6MM contract last summer to try to give Chicago some stability between the pipes, he has yet to play for them this season. It doesn’t look like he will either as Ben Pope of the Chicago Sun-Times relays that goalie coach Jimmy Waite recently indicated that he doesn’t expect the netminder to be able to return this season.
The 31-year-old underwent meniscus surgery in late August that was initially expected to carry a five-to-seven-week recovery timeline. While that would mean he’d miss training camp, the thought was that he’d be ready to play early in the regular season and he was originally thought to be ready to debut partway through their opening road trip. Then in late October, he was supposed to begin skating and would need a few weeks to ramp up. Two weeks later, his timeline was changed to being out indefinitely.
Brossoit then underwent a second procedure on his knee at the end of November with no timeline for a return although GM Kyle Davidson was hopeful back in late January that his new netminder would be able to play this season. Clearly, that’s no longer the case although Brossoit recently expressed some optimism to Waite about his recovery which could be a good sign for next year.
Brossoit posted a 2.00 GAA and a .927 SV% in 23 games with Winnipeg in 2023-24, a solid bounce-back performance after being in the minors at times the year before. That made him one of the bigger wild cards heading into free agency but even with his inconsistent track record, he still landed the biggest financial commitment of his career and looked to be part of Chicago’s short-term plans at the very least.
But that fit is much less certain now. Arvid Soderblom, who Brossoit was likely signed to replace in the goaltending platoon, has bounced back quite well after a disastrous performance last season, upping his save percentage by 25 points along the way. In doing so, he’s back to being in at least the shorter-term plans in goal as well with prospects Drew Commesso and Adam Gajan not ready for full-time NHL duty just yet.
Meanwhile, Chicago also picked up Spencer Knight from Florida as a key part of the return in their trade for Seth Jones earlier this month. At 23, he’s now their goalie of the present and future so he figures to be the top option in their tandem with Soderblom as the backup.
Chicago was able to move Petr Mrazek on Friday to avoid an extended stretch of carrying three netminders but assuming Brossoit is able to play next season, they’ll be in that situation once more. But Davidson at least has some time to come up with a plan for how to handle that situation as now with Brossoit effectively ruled out for the rest of this season, it won’t be an issue until training camp in the fall.