Connor Bedard shouldn’t be exempt from criticism, but the criticism needs context

The Blackhawks have lost to last year’s two Stanley Cup finalists in consecutive games, and national TV analysts have sharply criticized teenage star Connor Bedard during both games.

During the first intermission Saturday against the Panthers, ABC/ESPN analyst Mark Messier called out Bedard for not being strong enough on his stick to prevent Sam Reinhart from scoring a net-front goal. That was true, but Messier’s follow-up comments implying he should be benched for it were over-dramatic.

“I’m sorry, the excuses for a young player are over now,” Messier said. “He has to be better than that. Sure enough, they get a power play and who goes right onto the ice? Bedard. There’s no quicker way to destroy the morale of the team than having players who don’t earn their ice time.”

During the second intermission Wednesday against the Oilers, TNT analysts Anson Carter and Paul Bissonnette broke down several video clips of Bedard making ill-advised or presumptive passes with low probabilities of success. They also mentioned a poorly timed line change shortly before the Oilers’ first goal.

“There’s so many little details to his game that he’s lacking right now,” Bissonnette said. “Yes, he might put up 30 to 35 goals a season and get his 50 to 55 assists by playing power play and getting all these minutes, but they’re going to continue to lose hockey games if that’s how he’s playing. That is pond hockey.”

In both cases, there were grounds for criticism. The two incidents fall into a different bucket than Jeremy Roenick’s childish whining about Bedard after the Winter Classic.

But all of it demonstrates just how bright the spotlight still is on Bedard and how much attention every imperfection of his receives, even — or perhaps especially — now that the novelty factor of his rookie season has dissipated.

Bissonnette added that Oilers stars Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl, two of the best offensive minds in hockey, don’t rely on “hope plays” as much as Bedard. He’s not wrong, but comments like that set an impossibly high bar for Bedard at this stage of his career.

Since Bedard has already been in the spotlight for so long, the fact he’s still only 19 years old seems to be forgotten or ignored at times.

In Draisaitl’s 19-year-old season, for comparison, he tallied nine points in 37 NHL games — during which the Oilers went 8-22-7 — before getting sent back to the WHL for the second half of the season. Bedard, meanwhile, tallied 61 points in 68 NHL games as an 18-year-old last season and has 46 points in 53 games this season.

“[Connor is] a 19-year-old kid, and he is under a microscope,” Hawks interim coach Anders Sorensen said Wednesday. “[With] everything we’re asking him to do, he puts his best foot forward and tries it. Mistakes are part of it. With him, the effort has been there, but he gets highlighted a lot because of his stature and profile of his game. He’s handling it real well. I give him a lot of credit.”

It’s fair to say Bedard shouldn’t be exempt from criticism, but any criticism should include several pieces of context.

First, he’s 19. Second, he has a meager supporting cast — his linemates Wednesday were Ryan Donato and Landon Slaggert, after all. Third, he was facing the best teams in the NHL in these two particular games — and Sorensen was intentionally matching his shifts up against McDavid.

And fourth, Bedard is scrutinized a hundred times more closely than anyone else on this 31st-place team because he’s the only player with any league-wide notability, to some extent. His mistakes are always highlighted; the countless mistakes made by every other Hawk, other than possibly Seth Jones, are not.

Bedard played better after the second intermission Wednesday. During one third-period shift, he was indecisive after crossing the offensive blue line and again lost the puck, but he recovered and poked it away from Viktor Arvidsson, creating a two-on-zero opportunity down low for Craig Smith and Pat Maroon.

Later, Bedard helped set up Alec Martinez’s game-tying goal by winning a crucial puck battle along the boards and shuffling it to Donato. But in overtime, he might’ve avoided Teuvo Teravainen’s back-breaking too-many-men penalty by hustling quicker to the bench to change.

Sorensen was obviously unaware of the TNT discussion during the game, but he saw the same plays with his own eyes and addressed them in the locker room. He and Bedard also had a lengthy chat at Fifth Third Arena before practice Thursday.

“There were some…really good parts of his game, and there…[was] some puck-management stuff,” Sorensen said Thursday. “That’s the yin and yang on both. The high-end stuff was really high-end, and then there were some hiccups.

“He’s a smart player, but he’s aware. Even if you look at those turnovers he had, if you look at who’s the first guy back after those turnovers, it’s him. So he knows.”

Bedard assessed his performance similarly, admitting there was “good and bad” and he needs to “clean up the bad.” But the mountain of pressure and scrutiny on him does seem to be affecting his mood more this season, probably in line with his accumulating fatigue and frustration with losing so much.

“I’m not watching broadcasts or anything,” Bedard said. “I’m playing hockey. Their job is to say what they see. I couldn’t really care less, to be honest, what people on the outside think of me. But of course I’m not going to be butt-hurt if someone says I make a bad play. I don’t care. It’s their job to say what they feel. I’m not going to take anything personally.”

Nobody inside or adjacent to this Hawks team is in a good mood right now. And it’s easy for onlookers around the league to pile on them, because negativity snowballs and the team’s terrible performance has done nothing to change the narrative.

When it comes to criticizing Bedard in particular, though, a big-picture perspective is necessary.

Note: Hawks forward Jason Dickinson suffered a high-ankle sprain against the Oilers, Sorensen said. Dickinson will get more imaging done Friday. It’s a relatively lucky outcome in terms of the type of injury, but he could still miss significant time.