What can Hawks’ Bedard learn from Toews’ legendary run?

In hindsight, of course, it’s all so obvious — the weight of it all, the burden. It was borderline unfair, unreasonable, unfathomable. When Denis Savard decided over the summer of 2008 that Jonathan Toews should and would be captain of the Chicago Blackhawks after just one season of pro hockey, just 64 games of NHL play, just 20 years of age, the coach was dumping nearly five decades of organizational futility on the young man’s shoulders. Not to mention the onus of reawakening a fan base, of being the designated leader of a group of older, more accomplished, more experienced men.

And while Toews felt uncertain and even unworthy of the honor — he spent that Blackhawks convention weekend nervously roaming the Hilton Chicago and making sure his elder teammates were cool with it — he didn’t truly comprehend what he was in for. The Blackhawks weren’t that big in Chicago. Toews wasn’t that famous. The expectations weren’t that high. The three Stanley Cup championships, the Hall of Fame career, the undying love of millions, the ovation he received Monday night as he showed up to the United Center as a visiting player for the first time — it was all inconceivable at the time.

If — no, when — Connor Bedard gets the same letter stitched into his sweater, the same honor and responsibility and burden, perhaps as soon as this summer, it won’t compare. The Blackhawks are that big. Bedard is that famous. The expectations are that high.

And he’s already been carrying it all for three seasons.

“I can’t compare anything that I went through to the pressure he’s been under since he was a junior hockey player,” Toews said before Monday’s 2-0 Blackhawks win. “I can’t imagine. Only one guy knows what that’s like, and that’s him. It’s pretty incredible to see how he keeps raising his game, too. What is he, 20? And he’s been in the league for almost three years now. The pressure that’s on him, what he walks around with every day, it’s not an easy way to grow up as a young man. But from afar, it looks like he’s doing a heck of a job.”

Bedard is more often compared with Toews’ longtime running buddy, Patrick Kane. The daring dangles, the sharp shooting, the showmanship — that’s all Kane. But Bedard’s position in the organization and in the locker room is more akin to Toews’ role during those formative years.

Since his first day on the ice with the Blackhawks in the fall of 2023, Bedard has set the tone. His work ethic, his seriousness of purpose and his extraordinary talent set him apart from not just his fellow prospects, but the older veterans charged with guiding him into superstardom. Even as an 18-year-old rookie, his teammates routinely and casually called him “our best player” in interviews. Most young players instinctively defer to older teammates on the ice; the older Blackhawks deferred to him, often to a fault, forcing passes to the one guy on the ice who could actually put the puck in the net regularly.

Bedard’s stature in the room has only grown in his third season. He’s only gotten better and better — achieving a level of superstardom this season that only the likes of Toews and Kane know — and the team has gotten younger and younger. He was a leader right away. He’s the leader now.

“When you’re 18, you’re not going to come in and say all that much,” Bedard told The Athletic on Monday. “I was just trying to learn and see what guys are doing. I’m still not the most vocal guy in the room or anything, but it’s a lot of (leading) by example. You can tell if someone needs you to come talk to them or whatever, but you have to stay within who you are as a person. You can’t change who you are.”

Toews didn’t either, and his authenticity earned him all the respect he’d ever need. He knew his strengths and he knew his shortcomings, and he didn’t try to be something he wasn’t. That resonated in the room. Toews knew his dedication and intensity inspired teammates to take their jobs more seriously, and he wasn’t shy about giving a teammate an earful if a shift went awry or the effort was lacking.

But in those early years, Toews struggled with the social dynamics of being a captain — the diplomacy to quell intrasquad spats before they rose to the level of a coach, the interpersonal skills to know when a teammate was struggling off the ice and needed an encouraging word or a good listener. Toews tried, and, to hear him tell it, often failed.

That’s where older players such as Brent Seabrook, Duncan Keith and Patrick Sharp stepped in, becoming the emotional heartbeats of the team. Leadership comes in many ways — including delegation. Bedard is the apex predator on the ice, but there are no true alpha dogs, no lone wolves in the current Blackhawks room. It’s easy to envision Frank Nazar, Alex Vlasic and Wyatt Kaiser growing into those supporting roles in the leadership group. In fact, it’s already happening.

“That’s a pretty good way to put it,” Kaiser said. “I’d say it’s more of a group than really one guy who’s like, OK, that’s our leader.”

While Toews has become the dictionary definition of an NHL captain, Bedard never played with him. He was drafted a little less than three months after Toews’ emotional send-off in April 2023; a changing of the guard so overt it almost seemed scripted.

Bedard’s captain has been Nick Foligno, who brings a completely different style to the role. Foligno is everybody’s big brother, a huge personality and gregarious type with an uncanny knack for reading people and saying just the right thing at just the right moment. But underneath the dad jokes and “back in my day” drinking stories, Foligno has been every bit as invested as Toews ever was, hell-bent on preparing Bedard and this next generation for what he hopes will be a second golden age of Blackhawks hockey.

It was never expressed explicitly, but Foligno was brought in for just this reason — to be a bridge between the captaincies of Toews and Bedard. If this is indeed the 38-year-old Foligno’s last hurrah, and Bedard does indeed take up the mantle, Foligno has no concerns. He thinks the world of Bedard, but his goal has been to lay the groundwork for not just a leader, but a leadership group.

“There are a ton of guys that can fill that role here already,” Foligno said. “I firmly believe that because they’re going to do it by committee. Whether one guy has the ‘C’ and other guys have the ‘A’, they’re going to probably build the same kind of culture and foundation that the guys had before, which is pretty exciting. They’re going to support each other.”

That said, Foligno first became a captain at 27 in Columbus, and even then, he felt he was too young. His dad told him a captaincy is “a gift and a curse,” an honor that requires so much energy and applies so much stress.

“You don’t really know what it means until you actually get in that role,” he said. “So no one’s going to prepare any one of these guys for that role. I’m still learning it at 38. So I think it’s a farce when you say, ‘Yeah, I’m ready to be captain.’ It’s just, do you have it in you?”

Toews didn’t know he had it in him at 20 years old, but his teammates knew it was there. Every teammate Toews ran into in that hotel in the summer of 2008 told him as much. It’ll be the same for Bedard, if and when he becomes the next captain of the Blackhawks. It’s been that way since Day 1. This is his team. His franchise. His future.

The “C” will only formalize what everyone around him already knows. Just like it did with Toews.

“I feel like I am a leader on the team, but we have a lot of guys that are,” Bedard said. “I don’t think the letter makes you act different or anything. It’s an honor, and it’s something you want, for sure. But it’s not going to change who I am.”

© 2025 The Athletic Media Company. All Rights Reserved. Distributed by New York Times Licensing.