Keith Hershmiller
With Connor Bedard’s hype meter climbing by the day, the 17-year-old from North Vancouver continues to exceed expectations as the countdown to his NHL draft day in June begins in earnest.
Fresh off his tremendous MVP performance at the World Junior Championship, Bedard hasn’t missed a beat since returning to his junior team. Despite his month away, he still led the WHL scoring race when he returned to Regina, with 64 points in 28 games.
In his first three games back with the Pats, Bedard raised the bar again with nine goals and 13 points.
- Jan. 8: Four goals, two assists and 13 shots on goal as Regina beat Calgary 6-2
- Jan 13: Three goals (including the winner), two assists and six shots on goal as Regina beat Saskatoon 7-4.
- Jan 14: Two goals (including the winner) and 10 shots on goal as Regina beat Portland 4-3.
On Friday, Bedard was officially named the top North American prospect for the 2023 NHL draft in the midterm rankings from Central Scouting.
If his name is called first in Nashville on June 28, Bedard will be just the second BC-born player to be selected first overall, following Burnaby’s Ryan Nugent-Hopkins in 2011.
In his draft year, Nugent-Hopkins put up a tidy 106 points in 69 games with the Red Deer Rebels and didn’t play at the world juniors.
Now 29, he has put up 581 NHL points. That ranks him fifth in his draft class behind Nikita Kucherov, Johnny Gaudreau, Jonathan Huberdeau and Mark Scheifele. Solid, but not spectacular. And on an Oilers team that also boasted first-overall picks Taylor Hall (2010), Nail Yakupov (2012) and Connor McDavid (2015), Nugent-Hopkins has always been just one No. 1 among others in Edmonton.
Nowadays, the WHL regular season is 68 games long. Bedard missed 11 games while he was with Team Canada, so he can’t finish with more than 57 games played. But he’s currently putting up 2.48 points per game — easily the highest in the WHL in this millennium. If he maintains his current pace, he’s tracking for 66 goals and 75 assists for 141 points.
Players simply don’t do what Bedard has been doing. So while it’s still extremely early and possibly unfair to make big declarations for a teenager, the hyper-skilled, super-smart phenom could have a chance to stake his claim as one of the best BC-born NHL players of all-time.
Here’s the competition he’ll be chasing.
The Hall of Famers
Let’s start at the Hockey Hall of Fame, where eight members were born in British Columbia. It goes without saying that comparing any top draft prospect to Hall of Famers before they play an NHL game does not suggest Bedard is guaranteed to make it to the level of these legends. But let’s have some fun and look anyway.
Steve Yzerman is a three-time Stanley Cup winner and the highest-scoring BC-born player in NHL history, with 1,755 points. But while Yzerman was born in Cranbrook, he was raised in the Ottawa area. So, he’s generally not counted as a true British Columbian.
Joe Sakic certainly is, though: he even has a street named after him near a community ice rink in his native Burnaby. Sakic sits second in scoring for BC players, with 1,641 points, and is arguably the top BC-born NHL player so far.
He has two Stanley Cups as a player and now one as a GM, along with a Conn Smythe Trophy and a Hart Trophy. He’s also one of just 30 players in the IIHF’s Triple Gold Club, thanks to his Olympic gold from 2002 and World Championship gold from 1994.
It’s an incredible resume. But as a prospect, Sakic didn’t experience anywhere near the same hype as Bedard. His 133 points in 72 games with the Swift Current Broncos in 1986-87 ranked him fourth in WHL scoring in his draft year, when Rob Brown of the Kamloops Blazers set the all-time single-season league record with 212 points. Yeah, it was the 80s!
Sakic was drafted 15th overall by the Quebec Nordiques in 1987, the year Pierre Turgeon and Breandan Shanahan were the top two picks in the draft. Sakic returned to Swift Current for another season before jumping to the NHL. In the end, he beat out Shanahan as the top-scoring player from his draft class by a margin of nearly 300 points.
Four of the other Hall of Famers skated in the NHL after the draft was introduced in 1963:
- Paul Kariya, Vancouver, fourth overall, 1993, 989 points, first in his draft class
- Mark Recchi, Kamloops, 67th overall, 1988, 1,533 points, first in his draft class
- Cam Neely, Comox, ninth overall, 1983, 694 points, ninth in his draft class
- Glenn Anderson, Vancouver, 69th overall, 1979, 1,099 points, fifth in his draft class
The two Hall of Famers from further back in history were winger Lynn Patrick of Victoria and goalie Cecil ‘Tiny’ Thompson from Sandon, BC.
Present-Day Players
What about younger players? Some tremendous stars are still playing or have recently hung up their skates. But, like Sakic, none carried the same pre-draft projections as Bedard has right now.
Carey Price might come closest. Born in the Cariboo in Anahim Lake, BC, Price spent his WHL years with the Tri-City Americans, where he won CHL goaltender of the year in 2007.
Hart was drafted fifth overall by Montreal in 2005 — very high for a netminder. And he lived up to his reputation, bringing home the Hart and Vezina Trophies in 2015. Price also has gold medals from the Olympics, the World Cup of Hockey and world juniors.
Sticking with former Canadiens, there’s also Shea Weber. A native of Sicamous in BC’s Shuswap region, Weber is a revered alumnus of the WHL’s Kelowna Rockets, where he won the WHL Championship in 2003 and the Memorial Cup in 2004.
It’s still incredible that Weber fell to 49th in the stacked 2003 draft. And while he was a three-time Norris Trophy finalist, he never won. Weber’s biggest prizes came in international competition: gold medals from two Olympics and the World Cup, World Championship and world juniors.
Among active players from British Columbia, Victoria’s Jamie Benn leads the points race with 807 points in 992 games. The Dallas Stars captain is another notorious draft steal, selected 129th overall by the BCHL’s Victoria Grizzlies in 2007. Benn is now second in scoring in his draft class, behind only Patrick Kane.
Nugent-Hopkins sits second among BC’s active NHLers. Rounding out the top 10:
- Milan Lucic, Vancouver, 50th overall, 2006, 577 points, eighth in his draft class
- Evander Kane, Vancouver, fourth overall, 2009, 558 points, fifth in his draft class
- Ryan Johansen, Vancouver, fourth overall, 2010, 549 points, fifth in his draft class
- Tyson Barrie, Victoria, 64th overall, 2009, 467 points, eighth in his draft class
- San Reinhart, West Vancouver, second overall, 2014, 406 points, fourth in his draft class
- Morgan Rielly, West Vancouver, fifth overall, 2012, 392 points, third in his draft class
- Mathew Barzal, Coquitlam, 16th overall, 2015, 352 points, 7th in his draft class
- Justin Schultz, Kelowna, 43rd overall, 2008, 287 points, 18th in his draft class
Officially, Weber, Andrew Ladd (550 points) and Brent Seabrook (464 points) are in the active top 10. But since all three are on long-term injured reserve and aren’t expected to play again, their point totals are now frozen. . So they’ve been excluded.
Barzal, at 25, is the youngest from the list above. And though there’s an eight-year age gap between them, he and Bedard are close and have shared the ice in the past for summer skates in the Lower Mainland.
The most recent British Columbian to be drafted in the top 10 was Cranbrook’s Bowen Byram. The former Vancouver Giant was selected fourth overall by the Colorado Avalanche in 2019.
Honorary British Columbians
We should also acknowledge two legendary defensemen who were not born in British Columbia but have very strong roots in the province.
First, Scott Niedermayer — whose credentials rival Sakic’s. Born in Edmonton, Scott and his brother Rob were raised in Cranbrook. Niedermayer won a WHL championship with the Kamloops Blazers as a rookie in 1990, then added a Memorial Cup in 1992.
Drafted third overall by the New Jersey Devils in 1991, Niedermayer won four Stanley Cups, a Norris Trophy and a Conn Smythe. Internationally, he has gold from two Olympics plus the World Cup, World Championship and world juniors, making him a member of the Triple Gold Club.
Niedermayer was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2013. He currently makes his home in Penticton, where his son Joshua is a defenseman for the BCHL’s Penticton Vees.
Also living in Penticton: Duncan Keith, who retired last summer. Born in Winnipeg, Keith first moved to the Okanagan city as a 15-year-old and spent two seasons with the BCHL’s Penticton Panthers. He was selected 54th overall by the Chicago Blackhawks in 2002.
Keith spent three more seasons developing. He was teammates with Weber for part of the 2002-03 season, winning a WHL title with the Rockets.
In Chicago, Keith won three Stanley Cups, two Norris Trophies and a Conn Smythe. With Team Canada, he earned two Olympic golds. Keith will most likely be Hall of Fame-bound as soon as he becomes eligible.
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