Connor Bedard's Vancouver homecoming helps him refresh after 'tough start' to Blackhawks' season
VANCOUVER, British Columbia — During the Blackhawks' morning skate Saturday at Rogers Arena, Connor Bedard glanced around and saw a large group of kids amid the empty seats.
At first, he thought they were Hawks fans — they were all wearing red hockey jerseys, after all. But then it dawned on him they must be from North Shore Winter Club, a youth hockey program in North Vancouver where he, too, played as a kid.
"You put yourself back in those shoes, when the NHL was just a dream and not a real reality," Bedard said. "It's fun to see the excitement of people, not only for myself but also for the game and the league. It definitely makes you think about those times."
This homecoming trip with the Hawks has been a long time coming for Bedard, who missed the team's lone visit to Vancouver last season during his six weeks out with a broken jaw.
He has obviously come home plenty of times since his NHL debut 13 months ago — he's very close with his dad Tom, mom Melanie and sister Madisen, who all still live in North Vancouver — but he hadn't come home for an actual game until this weekend. He will be back with the Hawks again in March this season.
Saturday morning actually marked just the second time Bedard has ever skated at Rogers Arena, even though he grew up just on the other side of Vancouver Harbour from it. The first time was during a camp when he was four or five years old, so his memory of it is quite foggy.
The 19-year-old master of dismissing narratives characteristically downplayed the significance of the Hawks-Canucks matchup for him, calling it "just like any other night," but it certainly means a lot to the large collection of friends and family who will be in attendance. Tom travels often to Hawks games, both in Chicago and elsewhere, but others don't have the time to do so.
"People kind of come out of the woodwork a little bit to try to get tickets," Bedard joked. "It's good to have them enjoy the moment and get to watch me play on this ice, so I think they're pretty excited."
A rare sunny late-autumn day in the Pacific Northwest welcomed him home Friday, which he spent just "chilling out" with his family because the Hawks didn't practice.
He and the Hawks hope this trip provides either the refresh or the spark he needs to get on a roll offensively. It's coming at either the perfect or the worst time, depending on one's perspective, since he has fallen into a slump the past few weeks.
Whereas he was producing plenty of chances but just getting unlucky earlier on, he hasn't produced much at all the last three games in particular, leaving him stuck on three goals in 17 games overall entering Saturday. He called it a "tough start" to the season.
"I just talked to him this morning casually," coach Luke Richardson said. "I said, '[There are] lots of people in the stands and excitement, but you've had that hundreds of times before already.'
"[When he's] moving his feet, that's when he's at his best. That's when he can really shoot and make plays. Sometimes in certain moments, you stop and look around, and that doesn't work well in his type of game. It's [about] short shifts, bursts and keeping his feet moving. When he's shooting the puck and making a play, he usually makes the right play."