EDMONTON, Alberta — Connor Bedard won the Connor battle but the Blackhawks lost the scoreboard battle in a 4-1 defeat Tuesday against the Oilers.
Bedard scored the Hawks’ lone goal, another highlight-worthy snipe in which he maneuvered the puck around Oilers defenseman Mattias Ekholm’s outstretched stick before picking a corner above goalie Stuart Skinner.
CONNOR IN EDMONTON pic.twitter.com/JSFgElwuOr
— Chicago Blackhawks (@NHLBlackhawks) December 13, 2023
The Hawks did keep Bedard’s even-more-famous Edmonton namesake, Connor McDavid, out of the net, yet McDavid added two assists to help the Oilers pull away for their eighth straight win. The Hawks incurred their seventh straight road loss.
It was an unsurprising result given the state of the Hawks’ Seth Jones-lacking defensive corps. Alex Vlasic logged a team-high 24:58 of ice time while Connor Murphy and Isaak Phillips also exceeded 21 minutes out of necessity.
A fluky own-goal by Nikita Zaitsev, who played 18:43, put the Hawks in a 3-1 hole in the second period out of which their equally weak offense was unable to dig. The Oilers finished with a 40-19 advantage in scoring chances.
“It sucks because it stings losing, and losing 4-1, it seems like we might’ve gotten dominated,” forward Jason Dickinson said. “But I really didn’t feel like we were.”
Added coach Luke Richardson: “I thought we did a pretty good job. If you take out the goal that went off Zaitsev’s stick and then [the Oilers’] power-play goal, we were right in that game.”
Connor vs. Connor
Nearly every Hawks game during the first few months of the season has featured Bedard facing some notable individual opponent for the first time.
Bedard has experienced his first meeting with Sidney Crosby, with Auston Matthews, with Nathan MacKinnon, with Nikita Kucherov, with No. 2 pick Leo Carlsson and — just Sunday — with Alex Ovechkin. Every matchup is interesting, but the frequency does diminish the specialness.
“Every night [when] you’re going in, you can pick a few players on each team that you’re pretty excited to play,” Bedard said Tuesday.
Indeed, Bedard might be tired of the recycled storylines at this point, and understandably so. He has discussed becoming less starstruck over time and instead focusing on being more assertive on the ice around such larger-than-life figures.
But Tuesday’s matchup against McDavid — the very best player in the NHL right now, the player to whom Bedard is most often compared and the non-Hawks player who has mentored Bedard the most — did feel especially significant.
They’ve known each other for a couple years now and worked closely together during a BioSteel-sponsored camp in August, during which McDavid imparted some advice on Bedard.
“I don’t want to annoy him too much,” Bedard said. “But if I can throw a couple of questions in there, [I will]. And he was great with me this summer. He was always giving me little things. It was really cool to see such a nice, humble guy, and it was pretty cool for me to get to spend some time with him.”
Added McDavid: “Obviously his shot is really what jumps off [the page], but I was impressed by just how smart he was, how skilled he is and how good he is with the puck.”
McDavid’s career arc establishes the best-case scenario for Bedard long-term, but it’s going to take years to determine if Bedard could viably reach McDavid’s level.
The Oilers superstar tallied 153 points last season, the most productive season by anyone in nearly three decades, and sports 38 points in 24 games this season. Bedard’s 24 points in 28 games are very impressive for a rookie but pale in comparison.
Reichel vs. Draisaitl, too
Tuesday also marked Hawks forward Lukas Reichel’s first-ever game against Oilers star Leon Draisaitl, whom he idolized as a teenager.
“He’s the best player ever in Germany, and he’s going to be like that for I don’t know how long — maybe ever,” Reichel said.
They aren’t friends like Bedard and McDavid are — at least not yet. Reichel said Draisaitl texted him on his draft night in 2020, but they haven’t talked since. And they play very different styles due to their body sizes: Draisaitl is 6-2, 210 pounds whereas Reichel is 6-0, 185 pounds.
But watching how deadly Draisaitl can be shooting from tight angles along the goal line has inspired Reichel, during the Hawks’ end-of-practice one-timer shooting sessions, to usually position himself at the bottom of the umbrella, too.
“He always scores from there, so I try to make it hard for myself,” Reichel said.
While Bedard clicked Tuesday, however, Reichel struggled. He misread his responsibility when defending a rush in the first period, leading to an easy Ryan Nugent-Hopkins goal for the Oilers, and ultimately received a team-low 10:14 of ice time.
“He’s got to have more fight in him,” Richardson said. “He’s just down on himself. It’s pretty hard for a coach to give a player confidence. All we can do is just try to show them some pointers.”
