Although he won’t play an NHL game for another 10 months, 17-year-old Canadian Connor Bedard already has hockey pundits wondering if he might be the league’s next pre-eminent star.
The 5-foot-10-inch forward scored 7 points in a game against Germany on Dec. 28 at the 2023 World Junior Hockey Championship, tying an all-time tournament record. The following game, on Dec. 29, he scored two goals and four assists against Austria. This brought his career Canadian World Junior goal total to 14, tying Regina Pats alumnus Jordan Eberle for the record.
Sports talk show host Rod Pedersen broadcast Bedard’s first WHL game. Bedard inspires comparisons with some all-time hockey greats, Pederson said in an interview.
“It’s a little unfair, and I’ve been guilty myself of saying that he’s the next Connor McDavid, the next Sidney Crosby. I started interviewing him when he was 14, and I asked him who’s the NHLer that you would compare yourself to. He said, ‘I’m me. I’m my own player,’ and I never forgot that,” he said.
“Every time I’ve interviewed him, I get intimidated. I’ve been in the business for almost 35 years, but when I interview him and look him in the eye, he is a very intimidating soul. He’s all business. He’s unbelievably mature, and that’s why he was given the first-ever exceptional player tag in the Western Hockey League—it was as much for his emotional maturity as it was his skills.”
In the TSN broadcast of the Dec. 28 game, commentator Jeff O’Neill compared Bedard to Mario Lemieux and Brett Hull. However, Pederson believes another comparison fits better.
“When [Bedard] went to the world Under-18s in Texas [in April], people were writing me saying, ‘He’s not McDavid, he’s not going end-to-end blazing through the whole team. But one Pats fan compared him to Marcel Dionne. And I said, ‘There it is.’”
Dionne, who stood 5 foot 9 inches, was drafted second behind Guy Lafleur in the 1971 NHL Amateur Draft. The centreman, who later won three world championships and a Canada Cup, retired in 1989 having scored 731 goals and 1,771 points, ranking him as the NHL’s 6th best all-time player in both statistics.
“I’m sure Marcel Dionne at 17 probably was built very similar to Connor. Shorter stature, an unbelievable shot, and very shifty. That’s him. He’s hard to catch. He’s hard to hit.” Pederson said.
‘20 Years of Randomness’
Moshe Lander, a senior lecturer in economics at Concordia University, said Bedard is someone the NHL can build its brand with.“From a business standpoint, he’s marketable,” Lander told The Epoch Times.
“He’s exactly into the hockey demographic that they’re looking for. He’s young, he’s Canadian, he’s clean in all senses. He doesn’t have a history of run-ins with the media, run-ins with authority, run-ins with the law. He seems to be a team player. He’s clearly skilled. And he’s doing it when ‘the world is watching.’”
Lander believes high hopes for Bedard aren’t misplaced, but their fulfillment is far from guaranteed.
“The great thing with being 17 is that you can be almost anything, so it’s easy to write when he has that game that, hey, this is the next superstar,” he said.
“The problem with those lofty expectations is it’s possible you can [fulfill them], but there’s still 20 years of randomness that can happen that can derail promising careers. As a Londoner, I think of Eric Lindros [born in London, Ontario,] as somebody who had an OK career and who had all of that promise, but was derailed by his own concussions and injury history.”
Bedard, who was selected first exceptional status player overall by the Pats for the 2020 WHL Bantam Draft, is expected to go first in the NHL draft as well. The NHL places teams that missed the Stanley Cup Playoffs in a draft lottery that gives increasingly higher odds for receiving the first overall draft pick the lower their place in the standings. Lander believes the culture of the team that gets Bedard will highly influence his career arc.
“The way that the NHL is now designed, you’re going to see teams tank to get him. But then when he becomes a professional, he’s now playing on a garbage team,” he said.
“Is he going into a franchise that is structurally well-run, it’s just [that] the talent pool is empty? Or is he going to a team that is just badly run? The Sabres have massively underperformed expectations for a decade. They keep getting these top picks and they keep wrecking them. So if Bedard ends up in a franchise that wrecks its talent, this is not something within his control.”
Regina Pats players chosen first overall in previous NHL drafts demonstrate how highly touted junior players don’t always meet expectations at the professional level.
Defenceman Greg Joly was drafted first in 1974 by the Washington Capitals but only had 97 points in 365 games during his NHL career. Centre Doug Wickenheiser was drafted first overall by the Montreal Canadiens in 1980 after an 89-goal season with the Regina Pats. His 10-year NHL career saw him on four different teams, scoring 276 points in 556 games.
Then again, Pedersen believes Bedard outshines these examples.
“If you’re asking, ‘Is he the best hockey player to ever put on a Regina Pats uniform? I think you'd have to say yes, based on what he’s done.”
But is Bedard a franchise player or a best-of-his-generation player?
“That’s one of those questions that has no right answer today, but it’s fun to talk about. It just depends where he goes. The expectations will always be high on Connor to deliver a Stanley Cup, turn a franchise around. If anybody can handle it, I think it’s him,” Pedersen said.
“I’ve been in the business for decades. There’s a lot of people that come along with skill but aren’t emotionally mature enough to handle it, and he is. So I’m hoping for the best for him because he’s a good kid, a really good person.”
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