With 15 minutes left in the second period of Wednesday’s game, the Blackhawks and Oilers were in a scoreless tie when disaster struck. Trying to wrangle a loose puck, two-way center Jason Dickinson was hit sideways, then fell to the ice with his leg trapped underneath him. Dickinson was immediately helped to the locker room, putting very little weight on his left leg in a situation that interim head coach Anders Sorensen said “doesn’t look good.” He left the United Center in a walking boot.
Given the apparent severity of the injury, Chicago had to wait until Thursday to find out how much time Dickinson would be missing. While it initially appeared that Dickinson could be out for at least the remainder of the season, the Blackhawks got some surprisingly good news on the status of one of their most irreplaceable skaters.
After practice, the team announced that Dickinson had suffered a high ankle sprain. When compared to the possibilities, that’s the best-case scenario – nothing was broken and his knee was somehow not impacted. He’s set to undergo more testing on Friday.
Still, high-ankle sprains can be tough to come back from quickly. Some have estimated that Dickinson will be out until March to recover. With the Blackhawks getting two weeks off starting this Saturday, the injury admittedly couldn’t have come at a better time.
While an injury to Connor Bedard would make Chicago all but unwatchable, Dickinson is perhaps the Blackhawks’ most irreplaceable player. His offense has gone down a bit from last season, in which he tied Bedard for the team lead with 22 goals, but he’s still a dominant two-way center who is always in the Selke Trophy conversation. He goes up against the other team’s top stars, like Kirill Kaprizov, Nathan MacKinnon and Mikko Rantanen, on a nightly basis and consistently shuts them down.
It’ll be interesting to see who the Blackhawks call up to replace the two-way star. The team already only had 22 skaters going into Wednesday’s game, so we could see a flurry of moves over the next few days to fill out the roster. As we touched on earlier this week, with Chicago going on a two-week break soon, it’s likely that the team sends young skaters like Landon Slaggert and Ethan Del Mastro back to Rockford to get some extra reps. However, the Blackhawks still have two games to play before then. Chicago can technically field a lineup by sliding Philipp Kurashev into Dickinson’s spot, but they don’t have any extra skaters. Who will get the call? Could Colton Dach come back up? We’ll have to wait to find out.
