Connor Bedard’s most recent highlights prove he is going to be even better than everyone thinks

I’ll throw out all of the caveats first, because that’s what every hockey fan outside of Chicago wants.

It was only a Prospects game, the NHL’s version of a condensed summer league right before training camp. Principally, it was filled with players at a level that Connor Bedard has already dominated, be it in juniors or on the World Junior Championships last December and January. It’s nothing latest.

And yes, the Blackhawks will still suck, so the hockey world doesn’t have to worry about our uncomfortable preening and bravado just yet. Nevertheless it’s coming, due to what Bedard’s hat trick against whatever flotsam the Blues dug up to go up against him on Saturday night portends. Sure, there’s probably only a pair NHL players on either roster for these. But players like Bedard are supposed to turn them into chum on the best way to becoming the face of the league. To wit:

That curl and drag, and the venom on the following shot, is going to beat at a number of NHL goalies, too. What’s most striking, and really most striking about all of his goals, is the laughable ease Bedard pulls it off with. This is the identical effort and a spotlight you and I give to taking our vitamins within the morning, and he’s flicking a wrist to Hadoken a puck top cheese.

The second goal is the peach:

Here’s one other angle to truly appreciate the ludicrousness of it:

Pitching evaluation has spent a number of time talking about “tunneling.” How much of a “tunnel” did Bedard have from below the goddamn dots to the far corner here? Even when there wasn’t a goalie in the best way, hitting that spot on the ice by oneself would be considered tricky. Bedard just sneezes this out. This is able to be the definition of taking the piss.

The third goal seems almost pedestrian after the primary two. Yes, by this point the sport is being played in a “let’s get this over with” manner, but the discharge. My god, the discharge:

That’s off his stick in a unit of time that may barely be measured. The shot is merely a rumor to whatever plug St. Louis had in net.

Regardless of the caveats, Bedard’s scoring instincts are off the charts in Ovechkin-land for somebody coming into the league. While teams will definitely try to push him or block him off from certain spots on the ice, that’s only a limited protection plan when every spot on the ice is his spot. That shot from below the dots is a spot teams are going to want him to shoot from on the facility play, until he starts picking corners from there anyway. And in the event that they have to stretch out to stop him wherever he is? Just open ice in the center from some place else.

As well, keeping him from the prime scoring areas will take more than a smile given his shiftiness and the unholy release. He’ll be out and in of those areas too quickly for any team or d-man to do much about it. This is a pocket-sized Nathan MacKinnon with a nitrous oxide tank on his shot release. The NHL hasn’t seen a 70+ goal scorer in 30 years. It won’t be this season, which is rapidly approaching, but Bedard is as sure of a bet to be the subsequent one as there is.

It’ll take some time, or possibly it won’t, for Bedard to come to terms with how the ice looks with adults on it with him. How those lanes close, where the hits come from, where the space is. Nevertheless it won’t be that long. This is coming for everyone.

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