Lincicome: Will Bedard be a genernational talent for Hawks? Only time will tell.

It is not clear when "prospects" became "phenoms" and now "generational talents," but I will take my share of the blame for the progression, being part of the hype apparatus that regularly overestimates the ordinary.

In my time I have praised early and without proof, oh, Michael Jordan and Frank Thomas and Mike Singletary and Patrick Kane and Kris Bryant, who all turned out even better than I thought they would.

I must also include Jay Cutler and Shawn Dunston, who did not, while Justin Fields is still pending.

My point is that you can't really tell about premature exaggeration other than to recognize it when you see it. My first critique of LeBron James, then freshly "generational," included the observation, "One of his many tattoos should read, 'some assembly required.'" And we know how that turned out.

James may be the last truly "generational player" in sports, someone who has kept promises others made for him, as certainly Tiger Woods did before James, while others have been carelessly and inaccurately identified.

When did we last hear of Cherokee Parks?

Some can be a "franchise player," as Fields is supposed to be or a "superstar," as Shohei Ohtani certainly is and eventually maybe a "legend," like Tom Brady, which takes much longer, but to be a "generational talent," you need to start young and stay great, as Serena Williams did.

My favorite example of premature hyperbole was Clint Hurdle, a Sports Illustrated cover wonder before he had played a game for Kansas City. Hurdle would never be what SI puffed him to be but he did become my second favorite baseball figure of all time, just after Don Zimmer and just ahead of Andre Dawson.

Facing the disappointment of a humdrum rookie season, Hurdle defended himself by saying, "If I had done everything I was supposed to up to now, I'd be leading the league in homers, have the highest batting average, given $100,000 to the Cancer Fund and married Marie Osmond."

Update that quote to a million dollars and Taylor Swift and the tale is as cautionary now as then.

Which brings us to a Canadian teenage hockey player named Connor Bedard who has not only been labeled a "generational talent," but "the future of hockey," not to put too much pressure on the young man.

And Bedard is likely to become a Blackhawk, though how that happened is part luck and part design, trading and tanking being the design part and something to do with bingo balls being the luck part.

In any case, the Blackhawks are the envy of hockey because the NHL has been waiting for Bedard since he was a sprout. Hockey has an eye for these things, knowing the next Sidney Crosby when they see one.

Playing in the solitude of Saskatchewan, young Bedard still managed to stir the Canadian imagination, selling out road arenas on his way to an "historic season," a designation that has the support of actual numbers; you know, goals and assists and stuff.

I will take all of that as true and concede that the Blackhawks, unlike the Bears, will do the right thing with the No. 1 draft choice.

What awaits young Bedard is more curiosity than passion, that being still reserved for the Bears quarterback, any Bears quarterback. So, Bedard should have a relatively simple transition to the big town, where hockey is taken less seriously than breakfast.

I was witness to the tennis debut of 13-year-old Jennifer Capriati, the next big thing in tennis before the Williams sisters actually became the next big things. This was a spring when baseball was on strike and spring training had been halted. A Dallas newspaper sent their baseball beat guy, Jerry Fraley, to Boca Raton to cover Capriati.

Fraley was irritated by the assignment and especially miffed that someone so young would have the nation's press already hailing her as, if not "generational" certainly "exceptional." Fraley challenged Pam Shriver to explain how a 13-year-old deserved to be playing Martina Navratilova.

"Would a 13-year-old be batting against Nolan Ryan?" Fraley demanded.

"Well," said Shriver, "she's almost 14."

The lesson here is, although he's only 17, by the time gets to the Blackhawks, Bedard will be 18. We'll see.