Nineteen-year-old Connor Bedard isn’t all that different from 18-year-old Connor Bedard.
The Blackhawks forward still lingers on the ice long after his teammates have left, practicing shooting on his own. He still sounds and acts like a teenager. He still dominates the Hawks’ training-camp scrimmages the way one would expect from a budding superstar.
Even his weight is the same as it was at the start of last season, but he is heavier than he was at the end of the season — fatigue from his first time experiencing the NHL game-and-travel schedule and eating difficulties because of his broken jaw took a toll.
But one thing that is slightly different about this slightly older version of Bedard is his comfort level. In interviews, he lets a little more of his personality show. In the regular-season games coming up, he will know a little more about what he will face each night.
“I feel a lot more ready to come,” Bedard said Friday. “The excitement was there last year, but I think I just feel more relaxed [this year].
“I learned a lot last year. It’s going to be beneficial for myself, coming in this year and having the knowledge of playing in the league and dealing with everything on and off the ice. [I’m] happy to have that and not the curiosity of, ‘What’s going to happen?’ ’’
Hawks general manager Kyle Davidson has noticed that shift, as well.
“Just call it what it is: It’s not normal what he had to go through last year,” Davidson said. “There’s also comfort in entering your second camp where you know what you’re walking into. You’ve been around the facility; you know what training camp is like. There’s a lot fewer questions that he’ll be wondering about or having to answer heading into the year.”
Back at home in the Vancouver area this summer, Bedard spent a second consecutive summer training on the ice with Justin Rai, the founder of Kaivo Hockey. Bedard described Rai as “the best at what he does.”
Together, they worked on increasing Bedard’s skating speed — one of his few raw skills that’s merely good rather than elite — and teaching him how to be more effective in NHL-caliber puck battles. At his size, he’ll never be able to control those battles physically, but he can use his stick quickness to emerge from many of them with the puck.
“[Connor is] really showing some initiative that he wants it,” coach Luke Richardson said. “He’s not going to go in and knock over a guy like [Alex] Vlasic, but he’s smart about it. He’s being more like a pest, like [going] on the forecheck with his stick and stealing pucks.”
Richardson did see Bedard do that occasionally last season, especially during the Florida road trip last November — when he scored highlight-reel goals shortly after stripping Lightning star Nikita Kucherov and ex-Panthers forward Kevin Stenlund — but it wasn’t a regular occurrence.
Even if Bedard improves in that regard, it also will help to have Tyler Bertuzzi as a linemate. Winning puck battles has been Bertuzzi’s specialty for years, which is partly why Nick Foligno recruited him to Chicago as a free agent this summer.
Bertuzzi and Taylor Hall have been slotted as Bedard’s wingers during the first three days of camp, and although Teuvo Teravainen and Philipp Kurashev also might receive reps in those spots later in camp, Bertuzzi makes a lot of sense as a semi-permanent sidekick for Bedard.
“[Bertuzzi] can play up and down the lineup, but he really complements skilled guys well because he knows how to get in the dirty areas,” Foligno said. “He makes turnovers, he reads the game really well and he’s such a competitor.”