Connor Bedard reflects on the Blackhawks season that was, not what might have been – The Athletic
SAN JOSE, Calif. — At the moment Connor Bedard jammed his shoulder during a physical faceoff with Brayden Schenn in the final second of a Dec. 12 contest in St. Louis, he was indisputably one of the very best hockey players on the planet.
Through his first 31 games, he trailed only Nathan MacKinnon, Connor McDavid and Nikita Kucherov in points per game. Just as notable, however, was how he stacked up against the young man against whom he’ll likely forever be measured: San Jose wunderkind Macklin Celebrini. The two rising stars were tied for third in the league in points with 44, though Celebrini had played in one more game. They were both a plus-8 despite being on poor defensive teams. They both had a 47 percent success rate at the faceoff dot. They both had their teams within 2 points of a playoff spot in the Western Conference. Bedard had four more goals than Celebrini, Celebrini had four more assists than Bedard.
It was happening. All the hype was being backed up, all the unrealistic expectations were being realized. The Bedard and Celebrini era had begun.
In the four months since, Celebrini has rocketed to megastardom. Entering Monday’s game against Bedard’s Blackhawks, Celebrini has 41 goals and 106 points, fourth in the league. He’s a serious contender to win a Hart Trophy in just his second season, the way McDavid and Sidney Crosby did. He skated on Canada’s top line at the Olympics and was one of the dominant players on the world’s biggest stage. Most importantly, he still has the San Jose Sharks fighting for a playoff spot, something that was unthinkable entering the season.
Bedard’s been no slouch himself. He has 30 goals. He picked up his 40th and 41st assists Saturday night in the Blackhawks’ 4-2 victory over the Seattle Kraken. He’s better than a point-per-game with 71 through 64. At five-on-five, he’s only a minus-3 on a team that’s a minus-38. But he won’t put up 100 points. He’s not in the Hart conversation. He didn’t make Team Canada. And his Blackhawks are nowhere near the playoffs, mired in 31st place after yet another trade deadline sell-off.
But Bedard’s not feeling sorry for himself, not wondering what might have been had he not injured his shoulder. Far from it. He feels great about where he is as an individual, and he feels excited about where the Blackhawks are headed as a team.
“You never want to get hurt,” he said after Saturday’s morning skate in Seattle. “You always want to play as many games as you can. But that’s not always going to be how it goes. I try not to look back at it too much.”
Bedard hasn’t been at his best the last handful of games. Nobody on the Blackhawks has, really. In the previous eight games before the one in Seattle, he had just two goals and two assists. After a strong stretch in the first half of March that included another scoring burst from Bedard, the Blackhawks’ offense had cooled off considerably, averaging fewer than two goals per game over an 11-game stretch.
But Bedard hasn’t slowed down any. He even went so far as to say he’s creating more since the Olympic break than he was when he was tearing up the league in the first 31 games of the season. And the numbers back that up: Per Natural Stat Trick, he’s creating more individual shot attempts per 60 (16.66 compared with 15.14), more scoring chances per 60 (9.72 compared with 8.22) and more high-danger scoring chances per 60 (3.17 compared with 2.93) since the break than he was before the injury. It was that interim period between the injury and the Olympic break, when he couldn’t even take a faceoff, that his play might have dipped a bit.
“I think since the break, I’ve created a ton, maybe more than when I was up there in points,” he said. “I feel pretty good. The last five or so games for our group have been tough. But I think the first 20-some after the break, I probably felt my best that I played. We’ve all been a little snakebitten for a little bit.”
The only difference between the start of the season and now is that Bedard was red-hot back then. And 31 games is not a small sample size. Now? Nothing seems to be going in. Saturday night, Bedard made a sneaky-great backhanded feed to Nick Lardis for a breakaway, only to watch Lardis’ shot disappear into Philipp Grubauer’s glove. Back in November, that probably goes in. He still finished the night with two assists, but like seemingly every night, he could have had more.
Given how dynamic he was in the offensive zone and how engaged he was in the defensive zone back then, it’s easy to imagine an alternate timeline in which he stays healthy, carries that momentum throughout the rest of the season and keeps pace with Celebrini — and maybe even keeps the Blackhawks in the fight, at least little while longer.
But injuries happen.
“It’s a tough injury, it’s tough to be injured that long,” coach Jeff Blashill said. “The injury came at a tough spot; he was super hot at that point. When he came back, I don’t want to say he wasn’t 100 percent, but he wasn’t taking faceoffs, that all leads to it. And I think since, he’s played good hockey, but none of us have produced at the level that I think we can and will. But certainly at that point, he had played as good of hockey as anybody in the league, for my money.”
Blashill, as he has all season long, heaped praise on Bedard for his commitment to becoming a more well-rounded player in his third NHL season. His defensive metrics aren’t great, but like Patrick Kane before him (and Celebrini, to be fair), he has the kind of skill and finishing ability that allow him to consistently outperform the expected goal shares. Beyond that, with the entire leadership group — captain Nick Foligno and alternates Connor Murphy and Jason Dickinson — dealt away at the deadline, Bedard has stepped into an even larger role within the team. He already was the face of the franchise; now he’s working toward becoming the voice and the heart, too.
“Zero doubt that he’s committed to leading this team and playing winning hockey,” Blashill said. “He’s one of our best players, and those guys have to play winning hockey, and there’s no doubt he’s committed to that.”
That Bedard has been so productive despite playing most of the season with rookie Ryan Greene (who projects as a solid but unspectacular depth forward) and struggling veteran André Burakovsky (who has just one goal and two assists in his last 33 games) speaks to how good Bedard really is, and really can be. It seemed as if he had finally gotten a long-term, high-end running buddy when Anton Frondell, the No. 3 pick in last year’s draft, came over from Sweden two weeks ago, but Blashill has since moved Frondell to center. In the meantime, Bedard has found some quick chemistry with Lardis, another rookie.
Bedard was diplomatic as ever when asked if he was bummed to lose Frondell as a linemate so quickly.
“You always want to play with great players, but we have a lot of those guys,” he said. “I was fortunate to play with a ton of great players, and we have a lot of those guys throughout the lineup. Whether I’m playing with him or someone else, I’m not worried. I’ll be excited with whoever I’m playing with.”
Bedard is always eager to pump his teammates’ tires and said that while the record has taken a dive here late in the season, the vibe in the room is great. The new young core has grown close over the course of the season, and the realization that this group — with a few more young reinforcements on the way — is finally the group that’ll be in Chicago for the long haul, has energized the team and made what would normally be playing out the string feel far more meaningful.
He’s always less effusive when talking about himself, of course. While Blashill said he expects “a continued leap forward” next season, as some of the chances he’s created over the second half of the season start going in more often, Bedard coolly and consistently downplays talk of where his star sits in the hockey firmament.
But there’s still an ever-present undercurrent of quiet confidence and defiance. The hockey world might have forgotten him just a tiny bit in the wake of Celebrini mania, but Bedard knows he belongs in the conversation, too. And with another long and productive summer back home in Vancouver looming — he hasn’t had any conversations about the World Championships just yet, but he expects to chart a similar course to his transformative offseason last year — it’s clear he wants to prove it next season.
“I kind of grew a bit in my game and stuff (this season),” he said. “It’s obviously good if you feel like you’re better individually and try to carry that on, but I think our group’s feeling the same way. Yeah (I feel like I took a big step), but you should. Each year, you should be getting better. I don’t really look at it that much, but I’m confident in myself. And I’m going to get better every year.”
