'Fit right in': Bedard looks good in NHL debut for victorious Blackhawks

PITTSBURGH — Connor Bedard is on the board. And, boy oh boy, is it easy to tell there’s more coming.

Bedard didn’t score a goal in his first career NHL game on Tuesday night in Pittsburgh, but he did register an assist in what turned out to be a downright impressive 4-2 win for the Chicago Blackhawks over the Pittsburgh Penguins.

For years, a prospect like Bedard is talked about in the context of how he stands out from his peers. But even when you’re billed as a future megastar, when you step into the best league in the world as an 18-year-old — and into a game where all-time talents like Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Erik Karlsson are on the other side — the most impressive thing you can do in some ways is look like you belong.

And aside from getting his clock cleaned in the faceoff circle, not one aspect of this game looked too large for Bedard.

“He fit right in,” said Hawks centre Jason Dickinson, who buried the game-winner with 4:31 to go in the final frame. “He didn’t look like a young kid trying to find the game. He was controlling the puck really well. He was making plays, he obviously got an assist tonight. So I think he’s looking really good.”

He was clearly feeling good, too. Even before the game, after he’d ripped off his traditional solo rookie laps in warmup with fellow freshman Kevin Korchinski, Bedard eschewed his helmet in favour of letting his flow whistle in front of the PPG Paints Arena crowd.

“I think I’m always confident in myself and there’s going to be tough games, it’s obviously the best players in the world, the best league in the world,” he said. “For me it’s just trying to get better every shift, get better every game. But yeah, I thought I created a bit and there are obviously things I can get better in, but I felt pretty good.”

“Getting to go no bucket [in warmup] was fun, too.”

Naturally, the most fun Bedard — who saw more ice time in the game than any Chicago forward — could have had in his debut was netting his first goal. There were certainly occasions it seemed like it might happen, like in the first period when he went barreling toward the crease and swatted a loose puck that sat right in front of Pens goalie Tristan Jarry. Or early in the second, when he took a feed from Corey Perry, skittered toward Jarry and tried to thread the needle on the short side under the crossbar with an attempt Jarry was just able to fight off with his shoulder.

So much attention has been paid to Bedard’s incredible shot over the years that you just sort of assumed his first imprint on an NHL game would come with that weapon. Even before the contest, though, Chicago defenceman Connor Murphy observed how Bedard can be an offensive threat in other ways.

“His playmaking has really stood out,” Murphy said earlier in the day. “The way he’s able to create space and move puck around his body to create passing lanes to his teammates is impressive and his passing [ability] is something I didn’t know [about] and expect coming into this year. So that’s something that has been impressive.”

Maybe it should come as no surprise, then, that it was a sweet little backhand dish to defenceman Alex Vlasic that got Chicago going when it trailed 2-0 in the second period and gave Bedard the first point of his NHL career.

“He was so dangerous the whole shift,” Chicago coach Luke Richardson said. “People gravitate to him defensively and [that allowed] Vlasic to kind of walk down freely, get a good shot and [Ryan] Donato just worked his butt off as he always does in the crease and got the goal. But it starts with Connor really moving and being creative and it got us going there.”

If that got the Hawks going, it’s certainly worth pointing out goalie Petr Mrazek helped keep them afloat at times, making a handful of five-star saves — including a breakaway stop on Crosby and numerous one-timers in tight — to make sure Pittsburgh didn’t open up a bigger lead.

And while all the attention is understandably on Bedard, it was the bottom-six crew that came through for Chicago in the third, with Cole Guttman tying the game, Dickinson sniping the winner and two veterans brought in to stabilize the ship — Perry and Nick Foligno — combining on the empty-netter off Foligno’s stick to salt it away.

“It’s unreal,” Bedard said when asked about the veteran leadership on this re-vamped — and already plucky-looking — Hawks crew. “We’re so lucky. We’ve got a really good mix, I feel, of the guys that are younger coming in[to the] league and guys who have been here a long time and they just know so much and they’re so smart on and off the ice. Just getting to have those guys in the room, being vocal and teaching us, it’s really special.”

That may be true, but everywhere Chicago goes this season, the focus is always going to be on the teenaged phenom, not the wily gray-hairs. After dealing with all the hoopla of his debut versus Crosby, Bedard now runs an Original Six gamut of Boston, Montreal and Toronto, where throngs of media and fans will be monitoring his every move.

What they’ll see is a player already equipped to navigate the NHL game and a person completely unbothered by anything he faces off the ice.

“There’s a ton of pressure that’s been put on him,” said Dickinson. “It doesn’t seem to faze him, doesn’t seem to even hit him. I heard him talk about it the other day [and] I thought he had a great response where he said, ‘I’m just playing the game I love and the noise is all of you guys, really.’ He’s just playing hockey. That’s all he knows. And that’s all he wants to do."