CHICAGO (AP) — Connor Bedard joined the Chicago Blackhawks for part of Tuesday's practice, stepping up his rehab in his return from a right shoulder injury.
Bedard got hurt on a draw with 0.8 seconds left in a 3-2 loss at St. Louis on Dec. 12. He ranked among the NHL leaders with 19 goals and 25 assists in 31 games at the time of the injury.
“I feel really good,” Bedard said. “Obviously getting to get out with the guys a little bit today and kind of just keep ramping up. It feels really good though.”
The 20-year-old center was ruled out for Wednesday night's game against the Blues, but coach Jeff Blashill left open the possibility of a return this weekend. The Blackhawks host Washington on Friday and visit Nashville on Saturday.
“It's great to have him back out there, kind of involved in some of the team drills,” Blashill said. “Those were kind of the flow-type drills, but we'll keep progressing. It was great to see him, great to see the jump that he has.”
Blackhawks forward Frank Nazar also was on the ice before practice. Nazar was placed on injured reserve last weekend after he was hit in the face by a puck during a 6-4 loss at Ottawa on Dec. 20.
“Good for Frankie to be skating,” Blashill said. “He's further away than Connor, but it's a good step in the right direction for sure. He started with eating solid food and moved towards this, so that's good.”
Chicago has won three in a row to improve to 4-6-1 since Bedard's injury. Asked about the timeline for playing in a game again, Bedard was noncommittal.
“Hopefully pretty soon I can get back out there,” he said.
With his fast start, Bedard made an argument for a spot on Team Canada for the Winter Olympics. But he was left off the roster when it was announced last week.
“There’s disappointment, for sure,” Bedard said. “Everyone in Canada would want to be on that team, or any country that's going. But there's so many great players. They got tough decisions to make, so obviously you respect that.
“It's a great team. You can't really be mad at the roster they picked, so there's no hard feelings for me.”
Bedard, the No. 1 overall pick in the 2023 draft, still could be added to Canada's roster as an injury replacement.
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FILE - Chicago Blackhawks center Connor Bedard handles the puck during the second period of an NHL hockey game against the Seattle Kraken, Nov. 20, 2025, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Erin Hooley, File)
MANILA, Philippines (AP) — A series of mild eruptions at the most active volcano in the Philippines has prompted the evacuation of nearly 3,000 villagers from a danger zone on its foothills, officials said Wednesday.
Authorities raised the 5-step alert around Mayon Volcano in the northeastern province of Albay to level 3 on Tuesday after detecting intermittent rockfalls, some as big as cars, from its peak crater in recent days along with deadly pyroclastic flows — a fast-moving avalanche of super-hot rock fragments, ash and gas.
Alert level 5 would indicate that a major explosive eruption, often with violent ejections of ash and debris and widespread ashfall, is underway.
“This is already an eruption, a quiet one, with lava accumulating up the peak and swelling the dome, which cracked in some parts and resulted in rockfalls, some as big as cars,” Teresito Bacolcol, the country's chief volcanologist, told The Associated Press.
He said it is too early to tell if Mayon’s restiveness would worsen and lead to a major and violent eruption given the absence of other key signs of unrest, like a spike in volcanic earthquakes and high levels of sulfur dioxide emissions.
Troops, police and disaster-mitigation personnel helped evacuate more than 2,800 villagers from 729 households inside a 6-kilometer (3.7-mile) radius from the volcano’s crater that officials have long designated a permanent danger zone, demarcated by concrete warning signs, Albay provincial officials said.
Another 600 villagers living outside the permanent danger zone have evacuated voluntarily to government-run emergency shelters to be safely away from the volcano, Claudio Yucot, regional director of the Office of Civil Defense, said.
Entry to the permanent danger zone in the volcano’s foothills is prohibited, but thousands of villagers have flouted the restrictions and made it their home or maintained farms on and off for generations. Lucrative businesses, such as sand and gravel quarrying and sightseeing tours, have also thrived openly despite the ban and the mountain’s frequent eruptions — now 54 times since records began in 1616.
The 2,462-meter (8,007-foot) volcano is one of the Philippines’ top tourism draws because of its near-perfect cone shape. But it’s also the most active of the country’s 24 restive volcanoes.
A terrifying symbol of Mayon’s deadly fury is the belfry of a 16th-century Franciscan stone church which protrudes from the ground in Albay. It’s all that’s left of a baroque church that was buried by volcanic mudflow along with the town of Cagsawa in an 1814 eruption which killed about 1,200 people, including many who sought refuge in the church, about 13 kilometers (8 miles) from the volcano.
The thousands of people who live within Mayon’s danger zone reflect the plight of many impoverished Filipinos who are forced to live in dangerous places across the archipelago — near active volcanoes like Mayon, on landslide-prone mountainsides, along vulnerable coastlines, atop earthquake fault lines, and in low-lying villages often engulfed by flash floods.
Each year, about 20 typhoons and storms batter the Philippines, which lies along the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” an arc of fault lines along the Pacific Ocean basin often hit by volcanic eruptions and earthquakes.
In this photo provided by the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology, lava flows from the crater of the Mayon volcano as alert level 3 remains raised in Albay province, north eastern Philippines on Wednesday Jan. 7, 2026. (Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology via AP)
