Blackhawks star Connor Bedard will spend most of this summer training back home in Vancouver, as usual.
Exactly what will that training consist of? Well, Bedard kept details hazy about his focus last summer on skating and speed, and he hasn’t even specified a broad focus like that for this summer. He said Monday it will be “nothing crazy.”
Then again, his contract negotiations will get far more attention than his training this summer anyway.
Hawks general manager Kyle Davidson and Bedard’s agents, Don Meehan and Greg Landry, decided to wait until after the season to begin that process. Meehan said Monday he expects negotiations to start “sometime in May.”
Without question, a contract will get worked out eventually. Bedard would officially become a restricted free agent July 1, but that wouldn’t change things, especially since he doesn’t have arbitration rights.
The NHL’s maximum contract length permanently decreases from eight years to seven starting Sept. 16, and training camps also begin around that time, so mid-September can be considered a de facto deadline to get things done. But it would be surprising if it took that long.
Bedard’s decision to differ from Frank Nazar and Spencer Knight and wait until this summer to sign an extension has paid off.
His improvement this season — in terms of production (73 points in 67 games entering Monday), defensive attentiveness and off-ice leadership — has raised his value.
Only six forwards since 2012 have recorded 200 points over their first three NHL seasons, and it’s an impressive list: Bedard, Kirill Kaprizov, Mitch Marner, Auston Matthews, Connor McDavid and Artemi Panarin.
There’s a good chance Bedard will be named Hawks captain before next season, too.
“We obviously saw his play, but his voice and his ability to command that room and be a presence within the room really took a step forward,” Davidson said in March. “You feel it when you’re around him. You see it when the group is just hanging out around the rink or on the road. He’s a guy who people gravitate toward.”
So what will Bedard’s next contract look like? Enormous, that’s for sure.
The skyrocketing salary cap has already led to some mind-blowing deals around the league, and Meehan and Landry have established reputations in preliminary talks as tough negotiators.
The contract’s term might be even more important than its financials. The Hawks would love to secure Bedard for eight years. That probably is the most likely outcome, but his camp could push for a five-year deal that would give him an opportunity for an even bigger payday as an unrestricted 26-year-old, for example.
On the money front, the Hawks will remind Bedard that the more reasonable he’s willing to be, the more salary-cap space will be available for them to bring in (and retain) talent around him — and the more successful, in theory, the franchise will be.
Entering the season, a cap hit around $12.5 million to $13.5 million seemed like a logical projection. Now, he might be climbing into the $13.5 million to $15 million range.
That won’t be a problem for the Hawks in the short term. It will actually help them reach the salary floor next season despite having so many entry-level contracts on the books. But it could become relevant down the road.
One thing Bedard will admit he’s looking forward to this summer is a get-together or vacation with his Hawks teammates, who will otherwise disperse around the world next week.
“Hopefully we’ll get a week or two where everyone’s schedule lines up and we can either come here [to Chicago] or go somewhere,” Bedard said.
“When you ask guys about teams that they win with, [they say] they’re all very tight off the ice, as well. That’s such a big part of it. We’ve already got that down, which is nice.”
