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Blackhawks’ Kirby Dach to miss 4-5 months after wrist surgery

Kirby Dach

EDMONTON, ALBERTA - AUGUST 05: Kirby Dach #77 of the Chicago Blackhawks skates with the puck in the first period of Game Three of the Western Conference Qualification Round against the Edmonton Oilers at Rogers Place on August 05, 2020 in Edmonton, Alberta. (Photo by Dave Sandford/NHLI via Getty Images)

NHLI via Getty Images

This is not the kind of news the Chicago Blackhawks wanted to get before the start of the 2020-21 NHL season.

The team announced on Monday that center Kirby Dach is going to be sidelined for four-to-five months after undergoing wrist surgery earlier in the day.

Dach was injured on Dec. 23 while playing for Canada at the World Junior Championship.

This is a significant loss for the Blackhawks this season.

For starters, Dach is the most exciting and promising young player on the roster and coming off a strong rookie season that saw him finish with eight goals and 23 total points in 64 games as a 19-year-old. Perhaps most impressive was his showing in playoff bubble where he took on a significantly larger role and never looked out of place, recording six points in the team’s nine games. This injury is going to wipe out a major chunk of his second NHL season, and maybe even all of it depending on his recovery. If he is not able to play this season, or only appears in a few games, that would be terrible news for his development at this stage of his career.

[Related: Blackhawks’ Nylander out 4-5 months after knee surgery]

This is also the second major injury for a young Blackhawks player before the season begins. The team is already without forward Alex Nylander for four-to-five months due to knee surgery.

Those two injuries no doubt played a role in the recent signing of Carl Soderberg.

The Blackhawks are entering a rebuild with a thin roster that has no proven starting goalie. This already had the potential to be a long year, and the most important aspect of it may have been seeing how players like Kirby Dach develop (and if Nylander can be a part of their future). Now they will not even get that.

Adam Gretz is a writer for Pro Hockey Talk on NBC Sports. Drop him a line at phtblog@nbcsports.com or follow him on Twitter @AGretz.