Connor Bedard has never encountered the kind of pressure — the spotlight-so-bright-it-could-blind-you kind of pressure — he will experience during his first season with the Blackhawks.
In fact, not only has Bedard never encountered this kind of pressure, one could argue no hockey player has ever encountered this kind of pressure at least at this stage of their career.
Due to a combination of off-the-charts talent, ending up in a massive market like Chicago, hockey’s overall growing popularity and the dynamics of today’s social-media consumption, it’s fair to say Bedard is the most anticipated NHL rookie of all time.
The odds are he won’t be as good as Wayne Gretzky (or Mario Lemieux, or Connor McDavid), but he’ll certainly have more eyeballs on him than Gretzky had in 1979 (or Lemieux had in 1984 or McDavid in 2015).
And handling that most-anticipated-rookie title and the accompanying pressure will be his first major challenge as a Hawk.
The good news is people close to Bedard are resoundingly, uniformly confident that he will overcome that challenge.
The Hawks got lucky in a number of ways here, but one major way is that the player whose hockey ability alone would have necessitated picking him first overall no matter what also happens to be an extremely grounded, disciplined and mature person.
That discipline is currently preventing Bedard from looking ahead past this fall, which — considering all the long-term planning happening around the rest of the Hawks’ organization — is probably a healthy mindset.
His comical unwillingness over the last two months to take for granted he would be picked No. 1 has now evolved into a comical unwillingness to take for granted that he’ll make the Hawks’ roster out of training camp.
“[My goals are] just having a good rest of the summer, training and getting better, and . . . trying to have a good camp and make the team,” Bedard said Wednesday. “If all that goes well, then I’ll start setting some goals. I like to set a few goals. But personally, right now, it’s just [about trying to] have a good summer.”
Even a ray of excitement that broke through his stoicism when asked about potentially facing Sidney Crosby in the Hawks-Penguins season opener didn’t break through that particular charade.
“Man, if I’m able to make the squad come October, that’s my idol ever since I can remember, [so] that would be unbelievable,” he said, grinning. “It’s a little bit of time away. [I’ll] dream about it now, but hopefully that comes.”
Bedard described a “gradual growth of exposure” over the last five years that has helped him transition smoothly.
Fortunately, this isn’t an overnight eruption of fame that could catch him off-guard. Nor will the 2023-24 season be his first encounter with intense pressure on the ice. He might not have already played in huge NCAA games the way an NFL or NBA top pick would have, but by hockey standards, Bedard has been a relatively big deal for a relatively long time.
Back in 2018, when he was 13, The Hockey News profiled him as “the future of hockey.” More recently, he singlehandedly made the 2022 world junior championships arguably the biggest junior-hockey event of all time. He also became essentially a touring sensation around Western Canada with the Regina Pats, playing in front of plenty of NHL-sized crowds.
None of that will remotely compare to the pandemonium that will surround him on the Hawks moving forward, though.
Jersey sales are already through the roof, just the way season-ticket sales were after the Hawks’ draft lottery win in May. ESPN and TNT already have picked up the Hawks’ first two games of the season, and five of their first six games will be various teams’ home openers.
It will help that expectations will remain fairly low for the Hawks as a team entering 2023-24; they won’t be playoff contenders, by design. And more reasonable fans will probably cut Bedard some slack, too, because of his subpar supporting cast and the fact it takes any kid — even a No. 1 pick — some time to get settled in the NHL.
But every single goal he scores will make highlight reels. Every single mistake he makes will be scrutinized. Every upward or downward shift in his perceived rate of development will cause elation or despair — and there inevitably will be ups and downs.
Staying confident and focused through that will not be easy. Whether Bedard succeeds in doing so will be a significant test.
