EDMONTON — Before any of us had even heard of the National Hockey League’s next great player, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins was already trading pucks with a precocious young lad who would hang around the rink in Burnaby, B.C., long enough to get in a drill or two with the big boys.
The kid’s name? Connor Bedard.
“He was probably 12, maybe 13. He would skate before us, and then because he was so elite his skating coach would keep him out for the first part of our (pros) skate,” Nugent-Hopkins recalled the other day. “He was really young. It was like, ‘Who’s this kid out here?’”
They stopped asking what that kid’s name was about the time Bedard was becoming the first Western Canadian ever to be granted ‘Exceptional Player’ status in major-junior hockey.
On Tuesday, as the 18-year-old Bedard makes his debut against the Edmonton Oilers at Rogers Place, he’ll see a friendly face in Nugent-Hopkins, and a foe in Connor McDavid who knows very well what Bedard is experiencing, as he travels the National Hockey League as a genuine candidate to be affixed with the label “The Next One.”
“It looks like he’s handling everything really well,” said McDavid. “Obviously, there are things going on there in Chicago, and he’s handled it really well. He’s playing at a very high level.”
On the ice, the reality of being a No. 1 overall pick is that Bedard is not surrounded by players who are necessarily of his skill level. The No. 1 overall draft pick from the 2010 draft, Taylor Hall, was brought in to play Bedard’s wing and help him to assimilate, but season-ending knee surgery put an end to that plan a couple of weeks ago.
Today, affixed with wingers like Nick Foligno, Philipp Kurashev or Lukas Reichel —none of them legit, top-unit NHL players — there are as many chances created by Bedard that go wasted as there are that result in goals.
McDavid joined a better team in Edmonton when he was drafted, but in the end the ice wasn’t where he had the most to adjust to anyhow.
“I would say (it was more) away from the rink. You just feel a little bit more like an adult, even though you’re not quite ready,” said McDavid, who found himself sharing a pad with Hall and Luke Gazdic. “I remember being 18 years old and not living with your family, not living with a billet family. In the NHL you get treated like an adult. There’s no rules and curfew and all that stuff. It has to be a choice that comes from within and to be prepared. I feel like most of the stuff away from the rink was the biggest change.”
Bedard speaks to the Chicago media almost every single day, and an early season tour through some major hockey markets — Boston, Pittsburgh, Toronto, Montreal — was a little bit hairy.
“There’s lots going on,” McDavid said of that first tour through the NHL. “I feel like my first year was getting hurt. It didn’t really feel like a year for me. For him, everywhere he goes, it’s a circus. It’ll be no different here when he comes to Edmonton. I’m sure you (media) guys will make him feel good and welcome. But he’s handled it all, it seems like, very well.”
Tuesday night’s game marks the first ever Connor vs. Connor showdown. But it was Nugent-Hopkins who likely saw this coming long before the rest of us, as Bedard returned every summer, eventually skating full-time with the pros.
“Once he was 15, 16, he was shooting it harder than everybody else,” Nugent-Hopkins said. “He was a great skater… Definitely impressive from a young, young age.”
From his spot across the Western Conference, the Oilers’ assistant captain has watched Bedard take the NHL by storm. A very good player on a not-very-good team, Bedard has 11 goals and 12 assists for 23 points in 27 games. That’s pretty decent production for a player fronting a Blackhawks team that is currently tied with San Jose as the last-place team in the NHL.
“You kind of knew he would break in a little bit easier because of his shot. The shot is just so elite,” Nugent-Hopkins said. “He’s able to get it off in tight areas, and he really can bring it in, push it out (changing the release angles).
“He’s not the tallest kid, but he’s built. He’s stocky and strong. His vision, the way that he thinks and sees the game… Obviously if you get drafted (No. 1) you’re going to have it, but you really need to have it to jump into the league.”
He’s jumped in with both feet. And now the other shoe drops, in a head-to-head with McDavid and the Oilers.
Does this make the elder Connor feel his age?
“I don’t feel like the old guy, no,” said McDavid, 26, with a chuckle. “I still feel like a young guy, with lots of good years left.”
