The Next Connor: Hockey’s latest phenom went the distance to find a game in pandemic

Melanie Bedard couldn’t sleep.

It was 4 a.m. and her two kids — Connor and Madisen, aged 15 and 17 — were flying to Sweden in two days.

In the middle of a pandemic.

“I sat up and thought, ‘I don’t think I can do this,’” she recalled. “You think about if something happens and you’re so far away.”

Connor Bedard, the first player granted exceptional status to suit up in the Western Hockey League a year early and tabbed as the likely first pick in the 2023 NHL draft, had already seen his inaugural junior season put on ice by COVID-19.

The prodigious talent from North Vancouver, B.C., needed a place to train and play, and Madisen, whose first year of university was restricted to online courses, could do her school work from anywhere in the world. So the family decided the pair would board a plane for Europe in the fall as Connor, the No. 1 overall selection by the WHL’s Regina Pats, continued to pursue his hockey dream with Swedish club HV71.

Melanie, like any mother, had some reservations.

But those fears were put to rest when a text message arrived out of the blue from a trainer that worked with Connor — he was good friends with the assistant coach the teens would be living with in Jonkoping, a city about 300 kilometres southwest of Stockholm.

“It was like, ‘OK, this is a sign,’” said Melanie, who hosts international students at the family home with her husband, Tom, and knows a thing or two about concerned parents. “I would have had them go anyways, but I was just struggling replaying all these scenarios.”

With both the Pats’ and the WHL’s blessing, that journey to Sweden was just the first step on a long, winding road Connor Bedard has taken during this pandemic season to quench an insatiable thirst for the game he loves.

“New country, new style of play,” he said of his two months overseas in an interview with The Canadian Press. “It was really cool to get there and learn.”

Once the jet lag wore off, Bedard joined HV71’s under-18 squad for practices.

“We realized he was too good,” Max Bohlin, general manager of the team’s junior program and head coach of its U18s, said with a laugh.

Bedard was quickly moved to the under-20 group, but still only for training. His days included two on-ice sessions and roughly five hours at the rink.

When the other players were in school, the centre would work on his lethal shot — one that pinged off the license plate of Melanie’s car so many times when Connor was younger that she got pulled over by a police officer because the numbers and letters were chipped beyond recognition — or take part in remote learning for classes nine time zones away.

“Everybody wants things in life,” Regina head coach Dave Struch said of Bedard travelling across an ocean to practise. “But what are you going to do to get it? What is the drive? He’s got it.

“He wants it, and he’s doing everything to get it.”

Once the WHL pushed its start date back even further, the five-foot-nine, 165-pound Bedard was allowed to play some games in Sweden. He’d register two goals and two assists in four outings with HV71’s U20s and two more points in another contest with the U18s.

“Always focused on the next thing … no matter if it’s a practice, scrimmage or game,” Bohlin said of what struck him about Bedard. “It opened up our eyes as coaches, as players. He’s a special kid, but in my opinion it comes down to focus and pure work ethic.

“Super humble. He’s just so mature for his age.”