Connor Bedard isn’t completely pleased with his rookie season.
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LOS ANGELES — Connor Bedard’s standards are high.
So when he looks back on his first Blackhawks season, he’s not entirely pleased with how it went, even though he led all rookies in scoring by a long shot and will likely take home the Calder Trophy.
“Personally, I think I was OK a lot, but maybe not as good as I hoped,” Bedard said Thursday. “But that’s part of it. [I’m] just learning. I feel like I improved throughout the year, which is big. But for this summer, I’ve got a lot of areas to improve. That’s a positive — to be able to go in knowing you feel you can get better.”
He entered the season finale Thursday touting 61 points (including 22 goals and 39 assists) in 67 games. His goal-scoring has tailed off somewhat this spring — he entered Thursday with just one goal in his last 13 games — but his playmaking has kept him near a point-per-game average.
It’s the best season by a Hawks rookie since Artemi Panarin in 2015-16, but Panarin was six years older then than Bedard is now. It’s the best season by a Hawks teenager since Patrick Kane in 2007-08 and the fourth-best of all time (behind only Eddie Olczyk, Denis Savard and Kane).
Bedard admits he has improved in terms of his comfort level holding onto pucks and making plays in the NHL. Over the course of the last seven months, he has refined his understanding of what does and doesn’t work at this level — and what a player with his caliber of talent and vision can and cannot pull off.
“The more you play, the more you’re used to playing against the top players in the world in the best league in the world,” he said. “That has helped me a lot.”
Conversely, he mentioned his defensive performance and his faceoff percentage (39.2%) as two areas where he has fallen short of his personal expectations, which makes sense.
The summer between one’s 18-year-old and 19-year-old seasons can bring about a huge leap, which is exhilarating to imagine when it comes to someone with a baseline as elite as Bedard. He’s optimistic he will take that next step, which would likely entail him evolving from not just the best player on a bad team and the best rookie in the NHL into a true superstar.
“I hope I’m better, of course,” he said. “I’ll do everything I can throughout the summer to try to make that happen. But actions speak a lot louder than words.”
Classic date
The Winter Classic between the Hawks and Blues at Wrigley Field next season will be held on New Year’s Eve at 4 p.m. CT, the league announced Wednesday. That means it will begin around dusk and largely be played at night.
The event has historically been held on New Year’s Day — and will still be officially called the “2025 Winter Classic” — but the NHL and TNT decided to move it a day earlier to avoid conflict with College Football Playoff games.
What’s next?
The Hawks will conduct exit interviews between every player and general manager Kyle Davidson on Saturday.
After that, the draft lottery will take place on either May 6 or 7. Then the team’s operations — focused on preparing for the draft — will fly under the radar until the scouting combine June 2-8 in Buffalo.
That will begin the busiest stretch of the offseason — headlined by the draft June 28-29 in Las Vegas, free agency starting July 1 and the Hawks’ prospect development camp in Chicago in early July.