5 Ways Chicago Blackhawks Rookie Connor Bedard Is Living Up to the Hype

We all had a pretty good idea about the kind of player Connor Bedard would be as a rookie and what he'd become as the years go by. What we're seeing from him at the very start of his career, however, is showing us that everything we've heard or read has been accurate.

Being the No. 1 pick in the NHL draft comes with lofty expectations, and with Bedard being in Chicago, it also comes with potentially unrealistic hopes of immediately turning around the Blackhawks.

The way he's started out over the first month-plus of the season has highlighted all of the strengths we've seen in video from his junior hockey days and that, yes, sometimes a player with enough talent and ability can make that jump immediately and be among some of the best players in the league right away.

Bedard has shown us so much over the first 14 games of the season (we know it's a small sample size, it's also the only sample size we have). It's wild to think there's more to come. We're here to examine the fascinating things he's doing to show that he's more than just a teenage rookie and that, yes, the hype was real and quite justified.

It may not seem super impressive that Bedard is already proving to be the best player on Chicago's roster, but being the best player on any team in the NHL at 18 very much is. After all, the team was bad enough last season to be one of the top contenders to win the draft lottery (which it, of course, did), so the bar may have been low for him to clear. But when it comes to offensive skill and prowess, he's the best Chicago has.

Through the first 14 games of the season, Bedard is already Chicago's leading scorer with 13 points, and he's tops in goals with nine. The next-closest players in goals are Tyler Johnson and Corey Perry, who each have four. Perry is second in points with nine.

While Johnson and Perry have been top players in the NHL earlier in their careers, they're not nobodies, either, and Bedard being reasonably well ahead of both of them at 18 is fascinating to see.

Even the best young players in the NHL in their first seasons haven't generally gotten out to such juicy starts, and for him to do that with Chicago sets the tone for what his career is going to be like.

It's one thing to be immensely talented. It's something else entirely to be all that and do things that haven't been done in more than 20 years.

This is where Bedard comes in and does cool things.

He scored nine goals in his first 13 games which tied him with Dale Hawerchuk for most goals in that many games by a first overall pick. It also made him the first player in Blackhawks history to accomplish that feat and the sixth rookie since 1994 to do it, too.

Back on Nov. 9, Bedard had three points in the first period against Tampa Bay, which made him the youngest player to do that since Hall of Famer Pierre Turgeon did it November 1, 1987. Bedard finished that game with four points and became the third-youngest player in NHL history to have a four-point game, and the two players who did it younger than him (Ted Kennedy and Bip Guidolin) each did it in 1944.

Connor McDavid had five goals and seven assists through his first 13 games. Bedard having 13 points in 13 games with nine goals helps provide some modern perspective to what he's done so far.

Scoring goals in the NHL is really difficult, and only the best of the best can make it look easy. In certain instances, he's shown the ability to do it all on one play.

Sure, it's early in the season and lots of players are traditionally slow starters, but Bedard appears to not be one of them.

He's reached his impressive goal total by never being afraid to shoot the puck. Sometimes, rookies will defer to veteran teammates and pass off on great opportunities. Bedard is not doing that.

He has 44 shots on goal through 14 games, which leads Chicago in that category, but compared to the rest of the players in the league, it puts him in a tie with six other players for 58th place. That he's scored on nine of those 44 shots (20.5 percent shooting) will get people to say he's scoring at an unsustainable pace.

While that's probably true, we'll find out over the course of the year and the next few seasons how far off that is from what his established normal pace is. But the top goal scorers in the NHL do best with a high shot volume as well as being able to capitalize on chances in close, and that's something Bedard has shown a knack for.

Being one of the best players on the team means having to play a lot of minutes each and every game. Sometimes with young players, that's not always the case unless they're defensemen. Young forwards are sometimes eased into the league because of how the pace of the game is so different from whatever level they're coming from the year before.

In Bedard's case, he's been thrown right into the deep end of the pool from the get-go.

He's averaging 19:22 time on ice per game, which is tops among all Chicago forwards. It also puts him in the top 52 among all NHL players. In his first three games, Bedard played 20 or more minutes in each game, and his ice time has normalized since then.

Forwards playing more than 20 minutes a game in the regular season is reserved for not just the best players but also those who can defend well and hold leads late in games also.

Bedard being tasked with this much ice time at his age is eye-opening. Sure, there could be some worry about him playing so many minutes on what's still a pretty rough Chicago team, but he's already one of their best, if not the best forward. These are minutes he should be playing even as an 18-year-old. What's more impressive is that he's thriving instead of wilting.

Bedard entered the season as the odds-on favorite to win the Calder Trophy as the NHL's top rookie. Hey, it's what happens when a player is taken No. 1, and they make the league immediately and have been crowned as the next great generational player before they've stepped on the ice.

But here's the thing about Bedard: He's already showing he's the best first-year player in the league right now with ease.

He leads all rookies in scoring with 13 points with Logan Cooley hot on his heels with 12 and defensemen Pavel Mintyukov and Luke Hughes each have 10. Bedard's nine goals are three better than Anaheim's Leo Carlsson and four better than Minnesota's Marco Rossi. Bedard is far younger than all of those players. Cooley is 19 years old, while Carlsson turns 19 in December and Rossi just turned 22 in September. Bedard won't turn 19 until July.

Watching Bedard learn the pacing of the NHL and figuring out what he can and can't do with ease is a lot of fun and seeing him create highlight-reel moments helps illustrate how good he's going to be. And while there are a ton of great rookies in this year's class who are already doing incredible things, it's Bedard whose efforts come with a little extra shine and a lot more effortless flash. And he's just getting started.