{"id":198187,"date":"2025-10-08T18:51:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-08T18:51:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/198187\/"},"modified":"2025-10-08T18:51:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T18:51:07","slug":"connor-bedards-game-took-a-step-forward-in-the-blackhawks-season-opener","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/198187\/","title":{"rendered":"Connor Bedard\u2019s game took a step forward in the Blackhawk\u2019s season opener"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg\">Connor Bedard and the <a class=\"text-secondary underline underline-offset-2\" hreflang=\"en\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dailyfaceoff.com\/teams\/chicago-blackhawks\/line-combinations\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Chicago Blackhawks<\/a> made their 2025-26 debut on Tuesday against the <a class=\"text-secondary underline underline-offset-2\" hreflang=\"en\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dailyfaceoff.com\/teams\/florida-panthers\/line-combinations\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Florida Panthers<\/a>, falling 3-2 in a tightly contested matchup against the defending Stanley Cup champions. <\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg\">Despite being held off the scoresheet, Bedard was buzzing throughout the night, getting shot attempts on net and making a concerted effort to battle for pucks in the defensive zone. After a 2024-25 campaign that saw him score 23 goals and 67 points, expectations for the 2023 No. 1 overall pick are through the roof.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg\">On Wednesday\u2019s episode of<a class=\"text-secondary underline underline-offset-2\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=3qNIv4nbTPM\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" hreflang=\"en\">\u00a0Daily Faceoff LIVE<\/a>, Tyler Yaremchuk and former NHL goaltender Carter Hutton are joined by former NHL forward and video coach Steve Peters to discuss Bedard\u2019s first game and what\u2019s expected in 2025-26. <\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg\">Tyler Yaremchuk: I felt like Bedard took a step forward on Tuesday. He looked really confident, he made some nice defensive plays, what did you make of his game? <\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg\">Steve Peters: I think it\u2019s an important year for Bedard. I know he had back-ot-back 20-goal seasons, but he needs to take a step forward, and it\u2019s not just about his offense. He needs to show that he\u2019s a 200-foot player, and a lot of the time last year, they had him play center but he was still covering the wing spot in the defensive zone. This year, he\u2019s digging in the corner. <\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg\">I thought he was playing quicker, his feet moved quicker. I know he was talking about how important it was for him to work on his quickness and his speed, and I thought we saw some of that on Tuesday. He led all forwards on both teams in ice time, he had six shot attempts and I think that\u2019s one of the things you\u2019ll look for him this year: he\u2019s going to try and shoot the puck more. <\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg\">He\u2019s always trying to make the play and make that really nice pass, but I expect him to be a little more selfish this season and get more pucks on net. <\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg\">You can watch the full segment and the rest of the episode here\u2026<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg\">\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Connor Bedard and the Chicago Blackhawks made their 2025-26 debut on Tuesday against the Florida Panthers, falling 3-2&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":198188,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":["post-198187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198187"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198187\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/198188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}