I have seen the future.
I’m not suggesting that I can provide you with winning numbers for the next lottery draw or tell you who will be victorious in this spring’s provincial election, but I have caught a glimpse of what professional hockey will look like in the coming decade.
You see, I was one of the more than 17,000 people who filed into the Scotiabank Saddledome last Wednesday evening to watch the Calgary Hitmen play the Regina Pats in Western Hockey League action. Although there were 40 players on the ice, we were all there — or at least the vast majority of us — to see just one of them: Connor Bedard.
The presumptive first pick in this June’s NHL Entry Draft, Bedard has captured the imagination of the hockey world, particularly since his tour de force at the World Junior Hockey Championships over the holiday season. That record-breaking performance — by a 17-year-old no less — has rocketed him to a whole new level of stardom, one that has seen the Pats sell out arenas wherever they play.
Everyone, myself included, wants to see him perform magic on the ice, the likes of which few in the history of the game have been able to do. Bedard didn’t disappoint on this evening, scoring Regina’s first goal, assisting on the tying marker in the dying seconds of the third period and then winning it in the shootout, extending his points streak to a whopping 35 games in the process.
However, seeing all the attention that was being directed his way — the signs, the shouting, the cameras — I couldn’t help but feel for him. Here’s a kid who won’t turn 18 until July, but before that happens, he will already have been introduced as the saviour of some team that’s languishing at the bottom of the National Hockey League standings.
He seems like a mature young guy — his refusal to talk about himself after Team Canada won gold in Halifax spoke volumes — but he is still that, a young guy, and much is going to be placed on his 17-year-old shoulders in the months and years ahead.
I know I had to give myself a reality check while watching the game last week because of unrealistic expectations I had for the phenom. I guess I had placed him on such a pedestal that any time he fanned on a shot or had the puck taken away, there was almost a sense of disbelief.
The rationale part of my brain kept telling me he’s human, he’s going to make mistakes out there, but there was another part that expected Bedard to stickhandle his way through the Hitmen and tuck one behind their goalie on every shift. Or at least every other shift.
I suspect I’m far from alone in expecting the extraordinary from this wunderkind — and given what he’s accomplished to this point it’s hard to blame us — but there’s part of me that wonders whether the expectations are so oversized, so unrealistic they’ve become unfair.
He’s lived up to the billing thus far, and there’s no reason to believe he won’t continue to do so, but let’s not forget he’s still just 17.
