So many rookies across sports enter the pros having never previously dealt with losing — think Bryce Young going from Alabama to the NFL’s Carolina Panthers, for example — that it’s easy to assume every rookie enters the pros without that experience.
But that’s not actually the case for Connor Bedard. He dealt with plenty of losing during his junior-hockey career, just as he’s dealing with plenty of losing on this year’s Blackhawks, whom coach Luke Richardson admitted Tuesday hit a season low-point on their most recent road trip.
In fact, despite Bedard’s prolific production, the Regina Pats still posted a losing record (70-78-12) over the course of his three WHL seasons with them, proving yet again how much less impact any singular player can make in hockey than in football or basketball.
Granted, the 18-year-old Vancouver native has experienced tremendous success playing for Canada in international tournaments. Those feelings of triumph inspire the heights he hopes to eventually reach in Chicago, too.
At the moment, however, he’s relying more upon the lessons he learned in Regina about mentally handling a lack of team success.
“I’m hard on myself, and when we lose, it sucks,” Bedard said. “I try to just get it all out that night — the frustration and everything — and that’s hard. It obviously carries over [to] the next day when you care so much.
“But we’ve still got a lot of games to go in the season. We want to get better every day, and we have the opportunity to get better every day, so that’s what we’ve got to be grateful for.”
Upon getting back to his hotel room or apartment (where he lives on his own rather than with a team veteran) after every game, he likes to rewatch all of his shifts, observing what he did well and what he didn’t. Regardless of the final score, doing so allows him to put his initial takeaways into perspective.
And at the rink the following morning, he’s always the same: focused but unfazed. His intense love for every aspect of hockey, including practice — a love so strong it baffles even his teammates — seems to help with that. Although he claims his emotions sometimes do carry over to the next day, it’s impossible to tell from the outside.
Moreover, that same ability to quickly flush emotions also applies in more micro situations, such as between in-game shifts.
Throughout his first two months in the league, Bedard has shown an occasional tendency to unleash frustrations after bad shifts by smashing sticks or punching the bench — or both, as was the case after a fruitless power play last week against the Red Wings.
Bedard is furious after another fruitless PP shift. Broke his stick on the boards coming off, then punched the bench a few times. Richardson has talked about how he lets go of that kind of anger quickly, but that was a LOT.
— Ben Pope (@BenPopeCST) December 1, 2023
Those dramatic outbursts are rare examples of Bedard acting his age — in contrast to the remarkable, beyond-his-years maturity he demonstrates beneath the off-ice pressure and scrutiny that follows him.
He has mentioned a few times now that he wants to get better at limiting those blowups. And if they affected team morale, translated into festering anger or snowballed into declining performance, they would be problematic. But to his credit — credit Richardson has often given him — they never do.
“You get a minute and 30 [seconds] or whatever on the bench and you’re back on the ice, so you can’t be dwelling on it,” Bedard said last week. “I can shift my attention to the next shift once that opportunity comes.”
He added Tuesday: “When I was young, I remember being a bit of a baby if things weren’t going [well] on the ice. But I was really young, so my parents just said, ‘Stop.’ Everyone has their moments where they get mad. It’s a competitive sport, and you’re going to have your emotions. It’s a good thing if you can control it in the right way.”
