Inside the design of Connor Bedard's new special edition stick

This article is presented by Sherwood Hockey.

When Connor Bedard takes the ice at Wrigley Field on Dec. 31 for the NHL’s Winter Classic, the Chicago Blackhawks forward will wield a bit of extra flash to mark the occasion. For the New Year’s Eve tilt against the St. Louis Blues, the 19-year-old’s usual Sherwood twig will sport a brand-new paint job heavy on Chicago-inspired markers to celebrate the NHL’s marquee outdoor event.

The new-look REKKER Legend Pro stick features Bedard’s autograph on the nameplate, one of many chrome details intended to evoke “Cloud Gate”, the Anish Kapoor sculpture better known as “The Bean” that’s become a must-see Chi-town landmark. The stick also includes a gridded layout of Chicago’s downtown streets and a nod to MLB’s Cubs in its red-and-blue detailing. 

Bedard was the NHL’s first-overall pick in 2023, and the shifty forward who’s scoring at nearly a point-per-game pace this season, signed an exclusive partnership with Sherwood that same year. Shortly after he started using the Legend Pro, “the stick kind of became like his signature shoe in a way … people just started calling it ‘the Bedard’ rather than ‘the Legend,’” says Jesse Ingalls, Sherwood Hockey’s creative director. “His imprint is all over the entire thing.”

Ingalls headed up the team that designed the Legend’s new look, and the 38-year-old approached the project with the same philosophy he’s brought to Sherwood as a whole, one that looks to blend history and innovation. Ingalls, who’s also a sneaker photographer, first got involved with the company in 2019, when he got a call from a Sherwood executive named Brendon Arnold. “He says, ‘What do you know about designing hockey sticks?’” Ingalls remembers. “I said, “Nothing at all.’ And he said, ‘Perfect. You’re the man for the job.’” 

The job, it turned out, was to help bring a fresh perspective to the now-75-year-old company. The first time Ingalls’ father saw one of his stick designs, the CODE V used by Matthew Tkachuk, the elder Ingalls said: “This is not your dad’s Sherwood.” 

“I was like, ‘Exactly! Perfect! We’re on the right path,’” Ingalls says with a grin from his home in New Haven, Nova Scotia. “I knew we were going in the right direction.’”

Given the Legend that Bedard carries every game already isn’t his dad’s classic wooden Sherwood — or Paul Coffey’s or Guy Lafleur’s — Ingalls points out it was important not to alter the actual stick in the forward’s hands for the Winter Classic. Instead, they kept the feel and performance while honouring the Winter Classic with a look aimed to last into the New Year and beyond. “It’s attached to this event, but it’s got a shelf life beyond just that one-day period,” Ingalls explains. “It’s not a novelty.” 

Bedard’s new lumber is just one part of a larger Chicago-inspired collection Sherwood is dropping Dec. 30. The Bedard Chi-town Collaboration Collection, designed in partnership with Avirex, a luxury outdoor clothing brand based in New York, and Marucci Sports, which specializes in baseball equipment, also includes a leather varsity jacket and a baseball glove and ball, among other items. All the clothing and equipment is focused on celebrating the Winter Classic and its host city and venue. 

Ingalls and his team began working on the stick about a year ago. The rest of the collection came later, though there are ties that bind all the pieces together — the grid pattern on the Legend also appears on the jacket and baseball glove, for example. “That challenge has been a lot of fun,” says Ingalls. “I relish that opportunity and I really enjoy it. It is challenging, absolutely. But that’s what makes it worthwhile.” 

The varsity jacket, a Sherwood and Avirex collaboration, features patches of the flags of Vancouver and Chicago, Bedard’s hometown and his adopted city. “On the jacket itself, it’s got this note about legends being born and legends being made. So, [Bedard is] making his legend in Chicago, but the legend, the person, was born in Vancouver,” Ingalls explains. Other details include a patch featuring Wrigley’s famous ivy-covered brick wall and the No. 16, which Bedard wore when he played for Canada in his first world junior championship (it’s also the 16^th Winter Classic). 

Sherwood sponsors a roster of hockey stars that includes Tkachuk, Alex DeBrincat, William Nylander, Emily Clark and Juraj Slafkovsky, but Bedard is the first of its athletes to play in the Winter Classic. After donning a sample version of the varsity jacket for a photoshoot, the Blackhawks centre asked Ingalls if he was going to be able to take it home. “Obviously he wants to take it with him, right?” the creative director says with a smile. They needed the sample for other photos, but Bedard did get a jacket of his own later on. He also got to wear the baseball glove and toss around the ball, which is hockey puck black. 

“All of this is very purposeful,” Ingalls says of the designs. “And that just ladders up to what we’re trying to do at Sherwood, which is tell creative stories, lean into people’s individuality, and then put a new spin on what you would see in the industry.”

Sherwood first sent Bedard a bag of the new sticks back in August, and he has been practicing with them to get used to the new paint job. “A lot of these guys are very particular about their gear, so getting them to do and use different things is a challenge unto itself,” Ingalls says. “We know this about Connor. So, the motivation was, let’s just make sure we use the base of what we have, and because we tell stories in all of our products, we’re able to just spin it in a different way.” 

Those spins are all over the special edition twig. For example, there are lines on a regular Bedard stick showing the topography of Sherbrooke, Que. — home of Sherwood itself. For the new-look stick those topographic lines were swapped for Wrigley Field’s. “So, there’s kind of these expected things, and then hopefully some deeper nuggets and Easter eggs, all with the intention of just making something that from afar and with no context to it, it’s ‘Man, that looks like an amazing stick. Connor’s using a completely different stick. That’s cool.’ And then if they dig a little bit deeper into it, there’s these other creative storytelling elements that are really interesting and bring the whole thing together,” Ingalls says. “The fact that he’s closely associated with it and because the graphics are in the same place, they’re just coloured differently, people will make that connection because, unofficially, it’s his signature model.

“It’s going to be really fun to see him with the stick in hand,” Ingalls adds. “I’m just excited to see it in the world.”