And you say all the right, boring things. You scroll faster, curate your feed a little more carefully, maybe even turn your phone off entirely. He knows how crazy it all is.Īnd this is how you maintain sanity in the face of all that insanity. The fame and scrutiny he has faced since he was 14, the staggering expectations he faces at 18, the hope of a franchise and of 10 million Chicagolanders riding on his shoulders - it’s all unreasonable, unfair, unfathomable. But there’s nothing normal about his situation. A good kid with “a good head on his shoulders.” That’s the wording that nearly everyone who has played with him, coached him or trained with him uses. Now in private, Bedard, by all accounts, is perfectly normal.
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I don’t really like to talk about that too much.”Īt one point, he went full Nuke LaLoosh: “I’m just taking it day by day and trying to be the best Connor Bedard I can be.” 1 center on opening night, destined to line up against his hero, Sidney Crosby, for his first NHL faceoff, but he demurred and said he has to make the team first, that he sees “everyone as equal on the team.” Yes, he had to be secreted in through the back door of his Arlington hotel Monday night, a taste of what his future will be like if he’s even half the star he’s expected to become, but he shrugged it off, saying: “A lot of guys deal with that. Yes, we all know he’s etched in stone as the Blackhawks’ No. Yes, his living arrangements for Chicago have been finalized, but he won’t tell you which veteran player, if any, he’ll be living with as a rookie. He’s smart and well-spoken, but he’s careful, guarded. The first reporter came sniffing around for an interview when he was just 12 years old, and he said he was “consistently” speaking in public by 14, so he knows the drill by now. 1 pick is NHL-ready with the puck on his stick or a microphone in his face. See, most teenagers come into the NHL a little raw, on and off the ice. And he says all the right things - which means, of course, he says nothing at all. He looks you in the eye when he talks to you he speaks with poise and polish. Oh, Bedard is exceedingly polite, a very pleasant young man.
You get the platitudes instead, the cliches. That’s just for him and his friends, his family, his teammates. That’s something I really enjoy, just being with that group and in that team environment.” “A lot of your best moments and best memories are when you’re just in the room talking to the guys, just bantering with your teammates. “I like to be loose,” Bedard told The Athletic from Tuesday’s NHL Players’ Association rookie showcase event, at which 34 of the top prospects and rookies posed for their Upper Deck rookie cards, shot some B-roll footage and lightly scrimmaged. In so many ways, he’s a typical teen, hanging out with his buddies and looking for a laugh. Hell, he’s just a kid, freshly turned 18 this summer. Proof that Bedard really is human, with human emotions and human reactions.
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