Lazerus: Connor Bedard’s parents cope with universal — yet unique — emotions

The Athletic has live coverage of Connor Bedard’s debut and the Blackhawks vs. Penguins matchup

Your daughter is playing soccer. It’s not serious stuff, just the local town-run league; the kind that costs $50 and lasts all of six weeks and is more about prying her away from the television than positioning her for a college scholarship. The jerseys have the logo of a lunch-meat company on the back. Your kid’s 7 years old. She’s not very good. She’s bigger than most of the other kids, sure, but she’s wary of that amoebic mass of little humanity that engulfs the ball and meanders around the splotchy field like a wayward dust devil. It’s crowded in there. Kids are kicking wildly in there. It’s all a bit much. So she stands flat-footed on the perimeter, watching, weighing her options.

GO DEEPER

Blackhawks roster projection 1.0: Who plays alongside Connor Bedard?

Helpless on the sidelines, you’re dying inside. As a parent, you feel a fundamental need for your child to succeed in anything and everything. It’s a biological imperative. Not because you need the validation, but because you want her to feel the validation. You want her to believe in herself. You need her to believe in herself. To feel good about herself. To be happy. It’s the only thing that truly matters. Yes, deep down, you know that failure is the best teacher, but you can’t bear to see her experience it. To feel it. To know it. You have a primal need to shield her from it at all times, in all settings. It’s the parenting paradox.

Advertisement

Ah, but she loses. She never even touches the ball. You’re crushed for her, because you know she must be crushed. How could she not be?

Then she comes off the field, gleefully grabs a Capri Sun and a bag of chips alongside her friends and squeals, “That was fun!” You go home, shaking your head. Smiling. Relieved. She’s happy, so you’re happy.

Parenting’s weird, man. You may have their life in your hands, but more often than not it seems the kid leads and you just follow.

Now imagine you’re Melanie Bedard. All those feelings, those chemical compulsions, exist for Connor Bedard’s mom, too. Only her son has been the most famous teenager in Canada for years now. Her son will be one of the most recognizable people in one of America’s largest cities, young and rich and on his own in the age of social media. Her son will be playing on national television in two countries. Her son, who was a literal child until he turned 18 just last week, will be competing against grown men, many of whom will be trying to smear him along the boards like an advertisement.

And her son will be burdened with expectations so heavy, so preposterous, that he could be the next Patrick Kane — a three-time champion, a one-time MVP, the greatest U.S.-born player ever to live — and not truly live up to them.

How does a parent handle that?

By letting the kid lead, of course. When your kid is calm and content, you’re calm and content. Well, calm-ish.

“I just know there’s nothing else he’d rather be doing,” Melanie Bedard said. “This is what he loves. Whether it’s shooting pucks in the backyard, getting together for three-on-three every Sunday, playing inline hockey — he just has so much fun. That’s so great to see. Especially in the position he’s been in, where it could just be overwhelming.

“With so much pressure, you could see how you could easily look at it differently, or how that pressure could overtake you. To this point, knock on wood, it just hasn’t. Even in Chicago at development camp, he just has so much fun. He’s not thinking in that moment, ‘OK, now I’m drafted, I’ve gotta do this or I’ve gotta get this many goals.’ He just, to this point, doesn’t look at it that way, which I think is a really healthy way to look at things.”

Advertisement

Talk to anyone about Connor Bedard — family, friends, teammates, opponents, NHL stars who’ve worked out with him — and you’ll always hear the same thing. “He’s got a good head on his shoulders.” He’s preternaturally poised, perfectly polished from a unique childhood that saw agents reaching out to him when he was just 10 or 11. He not only says the right things, he means them. Credit, naturally, goes to his parents, Melanie and Tom, for keeping him grounded and humble and focused.

But to hear Melanie tell it, Connor deserves just as much credit for keeping his parents from buckling under the sheer weight of it all. Hockey’s a team game, and parenting, at its best, is a team effort.

“As a parent, even watching the (WHL) playoffs, there were a couple of times Tom and I would look at each other — you see that level, the speed, the physicality, and as a mom, you worry,” Melanie said. “Even just standing at the rinks, whether it’s at the world juniors or Regina or on the road in the WHL, people come to the games when Connor’s playing and they’re sort of expecting something amazing every time. Being in the stands, I do feel a bit of that pressure for him. But I really don’t think he pays attention to that outside noise — the good or the bad. He doesn’t pay attention to it, doesn’t get wrapped up in it, and we really follow that example. If we did start paying attention to it, it’d be overwhelming. He’s just 18.”

Eighteen. Just barely, at that. Even among his draft class, Bedard is astonishingly young. That brings in a flood of other questions the Bedards need to answer in the coming weeks. Will he live on his own? With one of his parents? With a Blackhawks veteran? How will he adapt to the grueling NHL grind? How will his skills translate to the best league in the world? What will he do on the road with a bunch of grown men who might enjoy a beer or three? And what the heck is he going to do with an off night in Las Vegas two weeks into the season at his age?

Bedard himself brushes the questions aside, even when his parents bring them up.

Advertisement

“I still have to make the team,” he always says, humble as ever.

But he’s making the team. Everyone, including surely Bedard himself, knows it. One Blackhawks veteran already has reached out, offering to take him in, Melanie said. If he chooses to get his own place, either Melanie or Tom will live with him for at least the early part of the season to help him get acclimated, like they did when he was a 15-year-old playing in the WHL for the Regina Pats. They’ve all already fallen in love with Chicago, which is easy to do in the summer. The details and logistics will take time and determination. This won’t be the typical hockey August spent fishing and chilling at the cottage.

The specifics of the questions facing the Bedards are new, but the sentiment is all too familiar. Bedard’s obvious skills always had him playing up a level or two, and each leap came with its own concerns. The first time Bedard was hit after skipping ahead to the bantam level, Melanie and Tom wondered if they made the right decision. When Bedard became the first western Canada player (and seventh Canadian) to be given “exceptional status” — allowing him to play a full season in the WHL at just 15 years old — Melanie and Tom worried about his physical and emotional well-being.

That first puck drop in Pittsburgh on Oct. 10 will be like nothing they’ve ever known, yet like everything every parent has ever known.

“It’s all those moments as a parent where you just feel nervous,” Melanie said. “When they’re going to take their driver’s test and you’re like, oooooooh, waiting for the call. Obviously, Connor’s journey is different because the sports world is watching. But those feelings are no different than what any child goes through, all the highs and lows of life. As a parent, you just hope that you’ve instilled everything and that they’re going to be OK. But you have all those worries, whether they play hockey or not.”

Madisen Bedard, Connor’s sister, was a competitive gymnast throughout high school. She never faced the glaring spotlight that Connor did and does, but she had that same inner voice that drives Connor and makes him his own worst critic and biggest motivator. Melanie and Tom spent years walking their own type of balance beam, trying to lend just as much significance to Madisen’s athletic endeavors as Connor’s without heaping on the same kind of pressure.

But in many ways, watching Madisen compete was even harder than watching Connor compete. There’s no hiding in an individual sport.

Advertisement

“You can’t compare the two sports,” Melanie said. “And Connor would say that to Madi about gymnastics. ‘You train for 30 hours, then you have six minutes and if you stumble on beam, that’s it. I have my teammates to bail me out. I make so many mistakes every game, but I have my teammates to bail me out. You don’t.’ I think watching her really helped.”

The Bedards have sat around the kitchen table and had these conversations, frank and to the point. They’ve talked about the pressure, the expectations of doing “something amazing” every night, the impatience of sports fans, the perils of coming of age in a big city with smartphone cameras all around you. They’ve spelled it out and hashed it out and gamed it out.

But they didn’t really need to. Connor knows. Melanie and Tom know. Madisen knows. They understand all of it, they’ve accepted all of it. It’s in the family’s DNA. And while Melanie will feel all those usual excruciating feelings in the stands at PPG Paints Arena on Oct. 10 and every game after — that inexpressible mixture of extreme pride and extreme terror that every parent knows at some level — she’ll know something else, too.

She’ll know that Connor will be smiling. At least, on the inside. And that means more to any parent than any goal, any record, any accomplishment.

“I’ll definitely be nervous,” she said. “I’m not going to lie. I do feel a little bit of that weight for him. I just really hope that I feel it a lot more than he does, so he can just go out and enjoy the game and focus on the fact that all of his hard work has paid off. That he’ll be doing what he’s always dreamed of doing.”

That, she’ll know, is truly something amazing.

(Top photo courtesy of the Bedard family)