CHICAGO — Remember this now, remember this for the rest of the Chicago Blackhawks’ season: the results no longer matter this year.

So, yes, the Blackhawks lost 7-3 to the Pittsburgh Penguins at the United Center on Sunday. The Penguins scored four goals on their first seven shots and got Spencer Knight pulled less than 13 minutes into the game. But honestly, the score didn’t reflect the game.

“We probably had more quality chances for than we did last night, especially in that first part,” said Blackhawks coach Jeff Blashill, whose team led 30-17 in five-on-five scoring chances, per Natural Stat Trick. “We probably gave up similar stuff. They went in and ours didn’t. That’s hockey.”

But, as we already went over, the result and the score are meaningless. That doesn’t mean this season doesn’t have meaning for the Blackhawks, and we’ll get into that, but it does mean you can stop looking at the standings. The Blackhawks’ hopes of a playoff spot were slipping with Connor Bedard, and they’ve disappearing without him. The Blackhawks were down to a two percent chance of making the playoffs before Sunday’s game, according to The Athletic’s projected model. The Blackhawks are 31st in the league with a .447 points percentage after 38 games. Only the Vancouver Canucks are worse, with a .446 percentage.

When Bedard is expected to return is still uncertain, and it’s very well possible the Blackhawks could be without him for some time still as they play a very busy upcoming schedule. Beginning with Saturday’s game, the Blackhawks had 21 games scheduled in 40 days before the Olympic break.

Lots of meaningless results lie ahead. Some nights could look like Saturday’s shootout win over the Dallas Stars, and some might look like Sunday’s lopsided loss to the Penguins. It’s not necessarily that the wins will be more valuable than the losses from here on out. In fact, you could argue the Blackhawks played better in some ways Sunday than Saturday. It’ll be about what happens within the game. That’s where the meaning will come.

Blashill has emphasized process from the moment he took the Blackhawks job. It was vital when they were winning. It remains so as they’re losing.

“We’ve never, I don’t think, maybe once or twice, even talked about the standings,” Blashill said after Sunday’s loss. “The reality is we just have to focus on getting better. We have to focus on our continued improvement here from a day-to-day basis. I’ve said this before, I’m a big believer in there’s nothing you can do about tonight. You learn from mistakes and move forward and get better tomorrow and that’s the way we’ll continue to look at it.”

Blackhawks captain Nick Foligno provided a lengthy but insightful answer about that, too.

“I think even when Connor and Frank (Nazar) were in, the process was always the focus,” said Foligno, who played in his first game since Nov. 15. “I think it gave us the results. Yeah, we had different personnel in, but the process should almost stay the same, if not get a little bit sharper.