CHICAGO – With millions of gallons of rainwater spilling down the North Shore mountains after an atmospheric river hammered Metro Vancouver over the weekend, Connor Bedard was naturally concerned about his family’s home in the Lynn Valley area of North Vancouver.
“It’s fine, but the street’s, like, flooded,” Bedard said Monday after the Chicago Blackhawks practice. “It’s pretty wild.”
So was the hype surrounding Bedard last season when he entered the National Hockey League as the most glorified 18-year-old since Connor McDavid – a generational talent who would not only save the Blackhawks but become the next face of hockey.
The hype was like those torrents of rainwater pouring out of the mountains, overwhelming and almost unstoppable.
“It’s almost unattainable, right?” Chicago captain Nick Foligno said of what Bedard was trying to live up to as a rookie. “As a young player, you get caught up in it. Bedsy has to realize he doesn’t have to be the saviour here. He just has to be a great player, which will, in turn, make this organization a great organization.
“That’s the hardest thing to understand when you care so much and you have such high expectations of yourself. And you’re young, so you don’t know, right? You haven’t gone through a lot of life experiences yet. That’s where we can help. And I think having an older room makes him realize that. And that’s what I’m excited about: we have a lot of guys in here who’ve won or have been around the league a long time and had success. And he can kind of just watch and see and realize that it’s going to come by committee here. He’s going to be the top one. But he’ll be really excited that he doesn’t feel like he’s doing it on his own.”
For his second season in the NHL, the Blackhawks are asking less of Bedard – or at least trying to ease the responsibility he feels to drive a team that has averaged just 26 wins over the last three years and last spring missed the Stanley Cup Playoffs by 46 points.
Chicago general manager Kyle Davidson signed a pile of experienced players in free agency on July 1, adding forwards Tyler Bertuzzi and Teuvo Teravainen and defencemen Alec Martinez and T.J. Brodie, among others. The Blackhawks traded for Ilya Mikheyev and also got back from injury Taylor Hall.
It is a different team that surrounds Bedard than the one last season, when the teenager led the Blackhawks with 22 goals, 61 points and a minus-44 rating.
“I think there’s a feeling of maturity in the room,” checking centre Jason Dickinson said. “Not that people were immature last year, but the games were immature — how we were losing. It was immature, silly mistakes. We were just a young team that didn’t understand what it took to win, and now we’ve brought in guys that have won, guys that have great experience. They bring a standard with them, naturally. It brings that (feeling) into the room that this is a mature group that has grown from last year. It’s still not perfect by any means, but we’ve got pieces that we can lean on at times because of their experience.”
As they prepare for Tuesday’s home game against the Vancouver Canucks, the Blackhawks are 2-3-1 but have been in every game. They look like a more competitive team.
Playing on the top line with Teravainen and Foligno, Bedard has seven points in six games, four of them assists on a Chicago power play that is sixth in the NHL at 29.4 per cent. Bedard is plus-two and his expected-goals share is 62 per cent at five on five.
“I had a lot of close friends on the team last year, as well, that are gone now, which sucks,” Bedard said of the roster turnover. “But, you know, you just look at who we brought in and how much they can really help us younger guys. And I think that’s been a benefit, for sure.
“Maybe just more voices in the room. We’ve got a lot of older guys now that have, you know, been in the league a while, won and have a lot of experience.”
As a rookie, Bedard began his NHL career by scoring nine goals in his first 13 games. Then he scored eight in the next 37. He also missed six weeks with a broken jaw. Bedard scored once in his final 14 games, but still won the Calder Trophy in a landslide vote over runner-up Brock Faber, the Minnesota Wild defenceman.
“I mean, I put more pressure on myself than any media or outside source,” Bedard said. “So that feels pretty similar (this season). Just more relaxed maybe, coming in with less attention.”
Bedard’s biggest takeaway from last season?
“I think on the ice, maybe (show) a little more patience,” he said. “You want to create something every shift (but) sometimes it’s not there. Just knowing maybe when to make the play and when to maybe be a little safer. I don’t want to take away my creativity; that’s the best part of my game. But just (when the play is there), take it.
“I mean, my job in the end is to produce and create offence, so that hasn’t changed. But like I said, just being more comfortable when to make plays and stuff. Overall, obviously, you’re a year older, you’re a better player. Maybe I was forcing it a bit at the start of the year, for sure, last year.”
Foligno sees a bigger difference.
“He’s really asking a lot of questions about the team now,” the captain said. “When you first come in, you’re just trying to do what you do and be what everyone’s expecting you to be. And I think now he’s like, ‘OK, I know who I am in this league, and I’m still going to grow and become a better player. But what can I do to help the team?’
“We didn’t have the success we wanted (last season), so he’s really concerned about the system that we’re playing and how he can help. That’s the maturity that I’m starting to see evolve from him. He really cares. He wants to be great. He wants to help this team be great. And I think he’s balanced those two things really well. You still have to be a little selfish when you’re that good. You have to make sure your game is where it needs to be. But he’s worried about, ‘How can I help the team as well,’ and that’s a great sign for us.”
Dickinson said of Bedard: “When I talked with him in the summer, he said to me: ‘I want to be stronger in the D-zone. I don’t want to be known as just a one-way guy.’ He wants to be known as responsible. He doesn’t want to be a liability defensively. As much as he is naturally talented and super-skilled, this is also about hard work. That’s important to see. He’s only 19. He will grow a lot more from what he already is.”