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Chicago Blackhawks centre Connor Bedard (98) celebrates his goal against the Ottawa Senators on Oct. 28, in Chicago.Erin Hooley/The Associated Press
You can pinpoint the biggest moment of Connor Bedard’s hockey career – June 28, 2023. That was the day he was drafted first overall. Bedard was going to save hockey.
Everyone had been saying so for years.
Within a few weeks, Bedard was being fed feet-first into the NHL’s black hole of egos. You go in a shooting star and come out a white dwarf.
Where’s he been these last couple of years? Hiding out in Chicago, becoming less and less of a discussion starter. The only time he leapt to the top of hockey’s news file, dragged into a sordid episode involving a teammate that all sides said was false, it was the kind of thing that makes anonymity look preferable.
Having spent ages telling people that Bedard was going to remake the game, hockey abandoned him as soon as he showed up for work. This is in keeping with the NHL’s kill-your-darlings marketing policy.
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The league is full of victims of a hype machine with no follow through. Pour one out for Alexis Lafrenière, Owen Power and Rasmus Dahlin. All recent No. 1 picks, all respectable pros, but were you to slip them into a deck of hockey flashcards, I doubt anyone outside their home markets would recognize them.
How many of the NHL’s heavy hitters could you, the sort of person who reads the sports section, pick out in their civvies? There’s Sidney Crosby, Alex Ovechkin, Connor McDavid and then the level of difficulty begins to rise vertically. Would you know Jack Eichel if you passed him on the street?
Other leagues love producing the sort of content where an unsuspecting fan is crept up on by one of their favourite players. A surprise is sprung, the fan swoons and we are reminded that these people are just like the rest of us, but with access to jets.
The NHL can’t do that sort of thing, because they can’t trust that their fans know who these people are.
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On Sunday, Bedard had three points against the Detroit Red Wings to move into the NHL’s scoring lead.Brian Bradshaw Sevald/Reuters
Bedard is the poster child of this institutional failing – the next McDavid who hasn’t been able to become the first version of himself.
Hockey’s hive-above-all approach to promotion isn’t helping him any. The Chicago hockey club isn’t doing much either. So if Bedard wants to become the sports brand people said he would be, he’s going to have to do it himself.
Now in his third season, the first glimmers of a breakthrough have started. There was a three-point night against St. Louis early on, and then a hat trick against Ottawa.
On Friday, Bedard was involved in all of Chicago’s goals in a 4-0 defeat of Calgary. It’s good to see that the Flames have figured out what their function is in the great circle of hockey life – making the other guys look like stars.
This is more than numbers. Bedard is becoming that rarity in the NHL – a guy who can win games by himself if he fancies it. How many other players under 25 fit that description?
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Macklin Celebrini, left, of the San Jose Sharks celebrates after the Sharks scored on Jake Allen of the New Jersey Devils in San Jose, California.Ezra Shaw/Getty Images
Macklin Celebrini, another hockey saviour turned unwilling hermit once he arrived in San Jose, is having a moment.
There is the whole Montreal Canadiens roster, which comes off like the best high-school team you’ve ever seen.
Anaheim’s No. 2 pick from a couple of years ago, Leo Carlsson, has his hand up in the air, waving it.
(I want to put one word in the minds of all Swedish hockey players, and the businesses that employ them – nicknames. It’s getting impossible to tell the various Petterssons, Carlssons, and Karlssons apart. They’re all good. They’re all handsome. They all seem like the same guy. Take a trick from basketball – more Popeyes and Boogies).
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There is a youth wave in the NHL, but the league can’t find a way to advertise it.
We’re still talking about the Florida Panthers like they just showed up, and doing another victory lap for Ovechkin, and pretending Nathan MacKinnon is having a resurgence (it’s just a surgence).
People crave newness and familiarity in their entertainment products. The familiarity doesn’t require tending. Nobody needs to be introduced to Tom Cruise. It’s the newness that needs explaining. If this were basketball, they’d have turned Bedard and Celebrini into Clark vs. Reese or Bird vs. Magic.
Those two players are on crummy teams? Who cares? They have star quality. If you tell people they are actual stars (and hint that they don’t like each other much), attention follows.
You do this when the players are new enough, and they will grow into their personalities. By the time their respective teams get good, the players are known commodities. This is Creating Interest in Sport 101.
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The NHL wants to wait until the guys they’ve already told everyone will change the game are on teams making conference finals. If that takes five, 10 years, they’ll wait. If it never happens – à la Toronto’s core four – then, oh well, what are you going to do?
What was the NHL’s plan if Leon Draisaitl hadn’t become the best wingman since Sancho Panza, and McDavid’s Oilers were permanent also-rans? Just forget the guy exists until the Olympics roll around?
That appears to have been it. Now that he’s pushed the Oilers into two finals by force of will, McDavid is the entire focus of the league’s marketing. Everyone else has drifted into irrelevance.
He’s in all the gambling ads, which is to say, all the ads. I’m not sure how McDavid keeps his skating so sharp, what with all the over/unders that must be tumbling through his mind at all times.
A successful league is populated by a full cast of characters. Good guys, bad guys, bad guys you love and good guys you hate. Even a casual fan should understand who fits where, and why it matters. This is how you create intensity around the regular season, which everyone knows no longer matters.
If hockey can’t manage this with a talent like Bedard, there’s no hope. So maybe he can do it for himself.
