Blackhawks vs. Oilers Tuesday NHL odds, props: Connor Bedard, Connor McDavid face off for first time

The current face of the NHL is Edmonton Oilers forward Connor McDavid, the No. 1 overall pick in the 2015 NHL Draft, who has more than lived up to the hype by winning three Hart Trophies and is the betting favorite for a fourth this season. The NHL hopes his successor is 18-year-old Chicago Blackhawks rookie Connor Bedard, a No. 1 pick himself. The two Canadian superstars will play against each other for the first time Tuesday with the Blackhawks visiting Edmonton. The game itself is almost secondary because the Oilers are vastly better overall and -480 on the SportsLine consensus.

Bedard is widely considered the best prospect to enter the league since McDavid, who leads the Oilers with 36 points (10 goals, 26 assists) after a slow start. During his current nine-game points streak, McDavid has three straight multi-point performances and a total of six goals and 17 assists.

Edmonton has won a season-high seven straight games and doesn't look at all like the club that was 4-9-1 after firing head coach Jay Woodcroft and replacing him with Kris Knoblauch. The cocaching change also coincides with McDavid going supernova. He is back as the +320 favorite to win the Hart and is -110 as an anytime scorer for Tuesday.

If you are wondering, McDavid had 16 goals and 32 assists with a plus-1 rating in his rookie season for the 2015-16 Oilers, who were a lot more talented than the rebuilding 2023-24 Blackhawks are. McDavid, still only 26, didn't win the Calder Trophy as Rookie of the Year in part because he broke his collarbone in his 13th NHL game and that cut his first year in half. Chicago's Artemi Panarin was the winner. By the end of his second season, McDavid had entrenched himself as one of the best players in the NHL.

"There's lots going on," McDavid said of that his first NHL season and of Bedard. "I feel like my first year was getting hurt. It didn't really feel like a year for me. For him, everywhere he goes, it's a circus. It'll be no different here when he comes to Edmonton. I'm sure you (media) guys will make him feel good and welcome. But he's handled it all, it seems like, very well."

Bedard, who won't be 19 until next July, is the -250 favorite to win the Calder and leads the Blackhawks and all rookies with 23 points (11 goals, 12 assists) in his 27 games. Bedard also has a nine-game road points streak (eight goals, five assists), a franchise rookie record. He is +175 for an anytime goal Tuesday night.

"It looks like he's handling everything really well," said McDavid. "Obviously, there are things going on there in Chicago, and he's handled it really well. He's playing at a very high level."

NHL marketing executives are surely hoping Connor vs. Connor becomes the NHL's best individual rivalry, which these days probably is McDavid versus Toronto's Auston Matthews (an American). It used to be McDavid vs. Pittsburgh's Sidney Crosby (also Canadian) or Crosby vs. Washington's Alex Ovechkin (a Russian), but Crosby and Ovechkin are nearing the end of their Hall of Fame careers.  

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