Even though Laurent Brossoit has been under contract with the Blackhawks for well over a year now, most fans probably don’t know who he is. Those who do probably know him as one thing: injured.
But that’s changing. The 32-year-old goaltender feels “pretty close” to game readiness at long last. He participated in one drill during Hawks team practice Monday for the first time in a long time.
“In terms of [my] ability to get low and do those things, it was great,” Brossoit said. “I was so cold, I felt terrible in the moment. But the ability to do it is good. Feeling confident in those tight areas and [facing] breakaways, that will be the next and last phase to get that back.”
Details have been scarce about his status over the past 15 months. In an interview with the Sun-Times, he explained the timeline, which began with surgery to address some right knee pain that popped up in August 2024.
“It was supposed to be a routine meniscus [operation] that a lot of guys get — like six weeks later, you’re back,” he said. “But it just wasn’t getting better. We scoped it again, thinking maybe there’s just a bit of debris in there, and it didn’t get better.”
A few brief attempts to resume practicing were quickly halted, and Brossoit ended up missing the entire 2024-25 season — his first of two years under contract in Chicago.
The eight-year NHL veteran had dealt with his fair share of injury issues during stints with the Oilers, Jets and Golden Knights, but this was unprecedented.
The many doctors and knee specialists he consulted kept running into dead ends and getting more and more perplexed. Brossoit’s belief he would ever play again wavered, and he “started to think about other things” he might do with his life.
“It was looking pretty bleak,” he said.
Finally, in late summer 2025, he got his right hip checked. And in it, doctors found a cam lesion — a bump on the head of his femur that was grinding down cartilage inside the joint.
He previously had the same problem with his left hip, which caused him back pain in 2021-22 with the Knights. After undergoing surgery to shave down the femoral head in May 2022, his back pain disappeared. He immediately suspected this was causing his knee problems, too.
“When we told everyone about the hip, everyone was…pretty sympathetic,” Brossoit said. “But I was very excited. I was like, ‘This makes sense. I’ve been through this before, with the hip being the cause of symptoms somewhere else.’ It was kind of like an aha moment.”
He admitted it “bugs him” he didn’t think of that possibility sooner, especially because most people — after discovering one cam lesion — go ahead and get both femoral heads shaved down.
He didn’t feel like he had time for that in 2022, but had he done so, this recent saga might never have happened.
“Here we are — both hips are done, and I’m starting to feel better than I’ve ever felt,” he said. “You really don’t realize how dysfunctional the hip can get. It can compensate for a long time. Now that I’m starting to get certain motions and strengths within the hip…you’re like, ‘Oh, that’s how that’s supposed to feel.’ It takes a lot of pressure off the knee.”
A typical recovery timeline from hip surgery for an NHL goalie is six to seven months, but Brossoit is considerably ahead of schedule right now. There’s no set date for when he’ll be fully cleared, but it seems possible it could be within a few weeks.
Then the Hawks will have to figure out what to do with him. There’s no obvious spot within their depth chart, since established NHL goalies Spencer Knight and Arvid Soderblom both recently signed multi-year contract extensions.
A minor-league conditioning stint followed by a trade is one conceivable way this could play out, but that’s difficult to predict with certainty. After dealing with so much uncertainty for so long, though, Brossoit is fine with that.
“Whatever route for me to end up playing in the NHL looks like, I’m all for it,” he said. “I’ve been in this situation before, and it’s always the [outcome] you expect the least that comes to fruition. Whatever that is, I’m game.”