Craig Button, a former N.H.L. general manager and scout, compared Bedard to Steve Yzerman, the Hall of Famer who captained the Detroit Red Wings to three Stanley Cups. “Connor has all the skill, but what impresses me is his intensity like Stevie Y’s, a killer’s instinct,” said Button, who tracks the entry draft and junior hockey for the TSN Network in Canada.
Such talk could easily turn a 16-year-old’s head, but Bedard is seemingly inured to it. He has being hearing it at least since he was 12, the first year he started skating with N.H.L. players in their off-season workouts. “I skated with them once that summer and was that annoying little kid out there,” he said. “When I was 14, I was skating with them consistently, pretty much every day they had ice.”
Soon, Vancouver-based pros like Mathew Barzal of the New York Islanders and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins of Edmonton, the first overall pick in 2011, would text Bedard when rounding up players for workouts and scrimmages. Those sessions gave Bedard a sense of the skill and speed of the N.H.L. game, but the business side of the league, particularly pre-draft interviews, stresses a lot of talented teenagers.
So, Newport Sports Management, the agency representing Bedard, set up interviews for its client with three N.H.L. general managers: Don Sweeney of the Boston Bruins, Kyle Davidson of the Chicago Blackhawks and Yzerman, now in the Red Wings’ front office.
For Bedard, the most intense was a one-on-one interview with Yzerman. “We talked for 45 minutes, and he asked a lot of questions,” Bedard said. “By the end it probably became more of a conversation than an interview. I asked him some questions and he gave me some advice about the game and the league.”