No. 55: CONOR BEDARD / This year's phenom, will become the latest generational player to generate skepticism. Inevitably & for no good reason.

The best skaters always have haters. The media can't do without doubt. With some audio clips from my interview with the wunderkind himself.

Connor Bedard with the Regina Pats. His future is looking definitely brighter than mine.

I talked to Connor Bedard at length last summer for a piece that ran in the New York Times. Clips from my interview will be available to my treasured subscribers for your listening pleasure below the paywall at the end of this missive. I found Bedard to be a super-likeable kid, seemingly unaffected by the attention that goes with hearing talk about NHL stardom that goes all the way back to middle school. Hey, you gain an expansive worldview when you start skating with NHLers in summer workouts at the age of 12 (“I was that annoying kid” as he describes it).

What impressed me most, though, was a conversation I had with his coach in Regina, John Paddock. I’ve never had a conversation with John when I didn’t learn something—he’s been around a long time, been a GM, coach and scout in the NHL before heading back to the grass roots. He has seen a lot of hockey and more of Bedard than anyone in the game, in the case the phenom whisperer. “[Connor’s] like Patrick Kane and Nikita Kucherov, except he can wind up being more of a goal scorer than either of them,” Paddock said. “Sometimes I have to pinch myself when I think about coaching a talent like his. There’s no aspect of the game that doesn’t point to him being a star in the league, and that includes the way he handles himself off the ice. He works hard, figures things out and just finds new ways to impress you.”

In basic math above, Bedard > Kane & Kucherov. Projection: an upgrade from Hart Trophy winners, future Hall of Famers, Cup champions.

Paddock is not and has never been the waver of pom-poms. He’s understated by nature. He’s not prone to enthusiasms like this. I trusted and will ever trust his judgments on matters like this.

In the wake of Canada’s victory at the World Juniors, I overheard (i.e., couldn’t tune out) a fan who said, and I quote: “We’ll have to see how Bedard adapts to the NHL at his size. He’s just a small guy.” One of his friends seconded the motion.

Welcome to a very distinguished club, Connor Bedard.

The default mode of fans is elite-prospect skepticism. So it has been for as long as I can remember. So it will forever be. It’s a variant of schadenfreude: For their love of the game to be validated, all teenage sensations must fail.

This goes in spades for the media, those opinion makers who take a pride in their immunity to hype. Whoever it might be, the kid hasn’t done nothing yet. He’ll never be [enter the name of your legend of preference here].

I carbon-date to ancient times but I choose not to live in the past.

Fact is, I go back as far as Bobby Orr playing for the Oshawa Generals—I was in attendance at MLG when he played his last junior game, the Memorial Cup final vs the Edmonton Oil Kings. Back in those days the self-styled sharps maintained that a rushing fool on the blueline would never get away with playing that way in the NHL, the supposed men’s league. How did that work out?

If it sounds far-fetched that there were doubts about arguably the greatest player in the game’s history and indisputably the greatest defence-man, consider this Globe and Mail preview of that same Memorial Cup final. (May 4, 1966)

Yup, Bobby Orr could only dream of being the player that Bob Falkenburg was. Sigh. Al Hamilton had his number retired by the Edmonton Oilers but solely on the basis of his WHA service. Falkenburg and Hamilton weren’t as good as Bobby Orr. Fact is, they weren’t as good as Bert Marshall.

(The only prescient take I remember issued from my buddy’s father, Ivan McAnsh, who knew a lot more about hockey than Joe Fan. Back in the 60s, he coached the Metro Toronto Police team, which could recruit guys straight out of major junior with a promise of job security and better pay than the pro minors. “Skating that bow-legged he’s gonna have knee problems,” Ivan said. And we know how that worked out.)

I don’t go back far enough to vouch for the existence of skepticism about Rocket Richard or Gordie Howe or Bobby Hull, but I suspect it was out there. Gretzky had his doubters, those who maintained a centre couldn’t get away with standing behind the opponents’ net in the NHL. Ditto Mario. Ditto Sid. Ditto McDavid. To the blinkered fan, they were all in for their comeuppances at the next level.

I consider myself an early adapter when it comes to this stuff of elite prospects with Orr and the Oil Kings’ blueliners being the teachable moment in my formative years. Back when I took one of my ill-fated runs at post-secondary education, I saw Gretzky in a couple of game of the Soo’s playoff series against Ottawa—yup, those were the days when folks said Bobby Smith was going to outstrip anything 99 would ever do. I knew what I saw, but I think a lot of fans or media saw only what they wanted to see.

For me, fans who only see Bedard as a “maybe” evoke memories of Crosby’s rise.

I saw Sid play in the 2003 summer-18s a couple of days after his 16th birthday, before his first game in Rimouski. I knew what I saw—I had seen a lot of junior hockey to that point, a bunch of World Juniors, Memorial Cups and the like. I made my mind up inside of five games that I’d track Crosby for two next seasons, what was bound to be the length of the junior career and, yeah, I thought there’d be a book in the life of talent like his as a teenager. I couldn’t find a major book publisher who agreed with me, but I did find a small outfit that paid me the barest honorarium, not enough to cover my expenses, but no matter. I still love the shot used on the original cover, one from an ESPN story I filed back in 2004. By the account of the photographer, Sid not only went out in uniform to the frozen St Lawrence but also helped clear the ice.

The first of two Sidney Crosby books I’ve written. From 2005, the first edition, 2,000 copies, features this covers. It’s a bit of a collectors’ item and I’ve seen it go for $100 US to $150 US on used-book sites. I wish I kept a box of them.

The book followed Sid right up to the Penguins calling his name at the 2005 draft. (That draft was in Ottawa and definitely had a makeshift feel after the NHL season lost to the lockout.) We managed to turn around the first edition and get it on bookshelves before Sid played a regular-season game in Pittsburgh.

I steeled myself for the reviews—believe me, I wrote it on the fly and not for a second did I think that it rose to the level of art. What I wasn’t prepared for, however, was a review that came out in advance of the book. To be clear: The publisher hadn’t sent out review copies before the book went on sale. No, on the TSN talk-show The Reporters, the panelists (Steve Simmons of the Sun, Michael Farber of Sports Illustrated and David Naylor, then of the Globe) and the host (Dave Hodge) panned the very idea of the book. Simmons, for one, called the Crosby book “absurd.”

Below, thanks to the archival capacity of Yahoo Mail, you’ll find screen grabs of my subsequent exchange of messages with Simmons. The first rolled out just after the show on September 18, 2005 as time coded.

For those scrolling on a small screen, the above reads:

I'm not sure which is harder to figure out: 1. How you can call "absurd" a book that you never read. Or actually just the thought of a book etc. When you get down to it, you can offer a synopsis of any book (the Bible, Harry Potter, Lanny MacDonald's bio) and call it absurd.

2. How you can suggest, as you have, that Phil Kessel will be a better player than Sidney Crosby. I'm not sure what personal experience you bring to the mix, how many times you've seen either play. Find one--just one--NHL scout or executive who agrees with you. Or one player who has played against them. [Your] opinion will be duly noted in the paperback edition of the absurd book.

And of course you're invited to the absurd book launch.

Again, the reply from Simmons above reads:

the absurdity of the book seemed to be the consensus on the panel today - including your former teammate Naylor

for the record, the rather weak lanny mcdonald bio (he cut all the good stuff out before it went to print and I basically walked away disgusted) sold 40,000 in hardcover - and was written at the end of his career, not at beginning

suggested the phil kessel thing in one of those TV moments - a two minute segment on TSN - where one of us has to take a side and I lost the coin toss - (although I do love his speed)

also - we're talking about your book - which is the best publicity I know - the more people follow this guy, the more people will buy the book - better for you, right?

and i look forward to the launch

I was moved to shout at that point.

Not gonna bother transcribing.

Should have just let it drop, but understand my frustration. Anyway, in a later email, I promised Simmons that I’d include this exchange in the paperback edition of the book. I kept that promise. (His suggestion that Phil Kessel > Sid hasn’t aged that well and is delicious considering his later Phil-eats-tube-steak exclusive in the Toronto Sun.)

Simmons is still at the Sun and still plying the his column the way Rick Dalton works his souvenir from The 14 Fists of McClusky in Once upon a Time in Hollywood.

I don’t want to be seen as beating up on Steve Simmons or his confederates on TSN, but I’m just rolling him out as an example of that point of pride for media types: immunity to supposed hype, as if they’ve been doubly vaxxed and triply boosted. The impulse of fan and media alike is to say that the supposed next big thing is no big thing. Haven’t seen the guy, haven’t read the book … but I’ve been around the block and I know etc. Simmons’s is an extreme example but a useful one.

My deux sous ici:

1. Worth remembering is, that Crosby, Bedard is a summer birthday, which is to say he is in fact one of the younger players in his draft class. Fact is, he’s only two months removed from having to wait until the 2024 draft.

2. Bet on the best players to figure out a way to be better players and follow through on commitment. Their success isn’t simply based on physical gifts but also an understanding of the game—the best are the smartest and the most dedicated strivers. I’ve always made the case that the most improved player over the last two decades has been Sidney Crosby—no one has worked harder and thought through how to be a better player than the defining player of the century so far. (Not Phil Kessel, that’s for sure.) From his rookie season to this point, 87’s physically transformed, almost unrecognizably. And no one has worked with his level of attention to detail. No doubt McDavid is following suit and so will Bedard after that. As great as Bedard has been so far, barring injury, his game is more likely to further separate him from the pack than level out.

Like Orr, like 99, like 66, like 87, like 97, Bedard won’t face a challenge to adapt to the NHL. The challenge will be the NHL’s to adjust to Bedard.

The Bedard interview below the paywall. Thanks for reading.