The two prevailing storylines around Connor Bedard during Blackhawks training camp were the stronger supporting cast around him and the relative dimming of the spotlight on him.
But although both things are true, so are these caveats: Bedard’s supporting cast still isn’t that good, and the spotlight on him is still intense.
The Hawks’ final home practice Monday — before they traveled to Utah for their season opener Tuesday — made that clear enough.
Bedard skated on a never-before-seen first line with Teuvo Teravainen and Ilya Mikheyev, two summer additions who ranked third and ninth, respectively, on their former teams in scoring last season. Then Bedard walked into the locker room and answered questions in front of a scrum of reporters from nearly every Chicago news outlet.
‘‘We obviously struggled last year, and we’re all coming in with a chip on our shoulder from that, so there’s a lot of stuff where we can improve,’’ he said, adding another example to the list of boring answers he joked he rehearsed at home this summer.
After all, the Hawks’ teenage superstar is only a year removed from entering the NHL as one of its most anticipated and scrutinized prospects ever. He did nothing last season to quiet the buzz or lower the sky-high expectations for his future, leading the Hawks in scoring and winning the Calder Trophy.
The Hawks’ season-opening road trip to Salt Lake City, Winnipeg, Edmonton and Calgary might not stack up against the 2023-24 season-opening gauntlet in Pittsburgh, Boston, Montreal and Toronto, four massive markets where the pressure on Bedard could’ve registered on a barometric scale.
But there’s a specific reason the league chose to feature the Hawks in ESPN’s opening-night tripleheader and, simultaneously, in Utah’s first game: They draw massive TV ratings. Winnipeg, too, is coincidentally where Bedard aced his toughest media-related test as a rookie, when he was grilled unfairly by reporters there about the false Corey Perry rumors. Edmonton, the home of Connor McDavid, might pose the NHL’s toughest on-ice test.
Immediately after that trip, the Hawks will return to Chicago to face the Sharks in their home opener, a matchup conveniently pitting Bedard and Macklin Celebrini — the last two No. 1 overall picks — against each other.
Throughout that stretch, as well as the 77 games after it, some combination of Teravainen, Tyler Bertuzzi, Taylor Hall, Philipp Kurashev and Mikheyev will operate as Bedard’s first-line wingers and power-play teammates.
That’s a stronger cast than last season, when Kurashev, Nick Foligno, Ryan Donato, Lukas Reichel and Anthony Beauvillier spent the most ice time with Bedard, but it’s also not stacked by any means. The Hawks’ opponent on most nights will send out a far more intimidating, talented and familiar top six.
It’s fair to say, therefore, that the Hawks’ improvement this season will be tied directly to Bedard’s improvement. In other words, the Hawks will go as far as the 19-year-old kid takes them.
That destination won’t be the playoffs, and it might not be particularly far at all. Thirty victories seems like a reasonable expectation for coach Luke Richardson’s squad this season, considering the Hawks won only 23 last season, but that still would put them among the bottom five or 10 teams in the league.
Still, the Hawks finally must make some sort of progress up the ladder this season, and Bedard will be the one leading that climb.
‘‘[My goals are] just for us to improve,’’ he said Monday. ‘‘It’s hard to put [on paper] a certain amount of points for our group. But if we do what we’re capable of, then we’re going to have a chance to win every night. That’s all you can really do.’’