tsukimint

Connor Bedard and Fraser Minten met in the spring of 2017. Fraser was 13 Connor was 12. 

“First time meeting Connor (around spring 2017) I was 13 and I remember he came out to a skate with my spring hockey team,” Minten told the Tribune in a text conversation. “Everyone was young at that age and didn’t really pay attention to who’s who or what’s really happening. Just go out on the ice and have a blast with your friends. So Connor was just another body. But I distinctly remember, right away we were doing this 1-on-1 battle drill out of the corner, and Connor went up against our best player, first rep, and the way he was able to stick-handle around him and then finish it off was insane. He made our best player look silly.”

Fraser studied his shot and stick-handling the entire time they practiced.

“The creative plays he was making just didn’t happen at that age. I would try and shoot as quick as him in my rep and the puck would barely get off the ice.”

He mentioned seeing Connor out on the ice with NHL players like Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Matthew Barzal and thinking he was “just as good if not better than them.” 

"He was shooting the puck just as good if not better than those guys. And that was probably when I realized it was pretty world-class, that release."

Fraser has talked a lot about noticing how skilled Connor was even when they were still so young, how he always expected to see him succeed. 

“I ended up on the ice with him a lot over the next spring/summer as I started going to the North Shore winter club … and every day (my friends and I) would go there, Connor would be on the ice. It seemed that he was always there before we arrived and was still on the ice as we were leaving. Whether it be specifically practicing one-timers, doing shootouts for hours or just gliding around flicking pucks around, talking about different scenarios, he just simply loved being on the ice and playing around and the joy he got from it seemed inexhaustible. By the time I got to play with him for the first time the following year at West Van, I was not surprised at all at the level he was playing at. I’d seen him make goalies years older than him look like sieves, scoring crazy releases that kids that age didn’t even think about. He knew how to get defenders to put their stick exactly where he needed them and then slip it under, go around them and the puck was through the goalie’s five-hole before they had even set for the shot.”

The next year they were teammates for West Van Warriors and became good friends. 

“He never treated you like he was way better than you, even though he was, and wouldn’t get frustrated with you when you would make mistakes. This made it really easy to learn from him and made playing with him so much fun.” 

According to their coach, Minten learned a lot from playing with him. 

“He identified he had one of the best shooters on the planet in Connor Bedard on his team. He said, ‘I’m going to have the courage to stay as close to Connor in shooting practice as I can’.”

Some pictures of them from their West Van era (both from Minten’s instagram)

This would pay off, because the two of them led the team in shooting percentage that year.

Their stats during their time playing together.

You can see them playing together here, Connor is wearing #98 and Fraser is #16. 

Connor was given exceptional status to play in the WHL despite being a year younger, he was drafted to the Regina Pats and Minten was drafted to the Kamloops Blazers. Despite no longer being teammates, they still kept in touch and remained friends. 

Minten was asked about Connor Bedard before he was set out to play against him in the Regina vs Blazers game in Kamloops.

“Yeah he’s one of my good friends back home, great guy, excited to play against him.” Q: Have you talked to him about what it’s like to go through this media frenzy? “No, I haven’t really talked to him about it. I’m sure he’d rather just not hear about it for once. I think it’s pretty crazy for him, it probably feels a little surreal at times–he’s just trying to play hockey and have some fun and he gets a lot of attention for sure.” Q: What do you think it would be like to be in his shoes? “Yeah it’d be tough I bet. It’s pretty hard to deal with the outside noise when you’ve got that much of it all the time but if there’s a guy who can deal with it well, it would be him.”

Even during the off seasons, they spend a lot of time together training, skating, and even doing inline hockey. In a media availability in 2024, Minten talks about how often they see each other in the summers and that they’re still pretty close. 

Q: How much are you still in touch with Connor Bedard?  “Yeah I still talk to him quite a bit, I mean in the summer we get to see each other almost every day training, so hopefully get to go say hi to him after this.”

Some pictures of them together during the offseason. training pics from their trainer's website.

This is a post from the inline hockey league they competed in, and this is a video from one of the summer tournaments they played in together. 

They also like to interact with each other on instagram so here are some of their replies on each other's posts:

During the NHL draft in 2022, Connor Bedard, who was slated to be the first-overall pick for the 2023 draft, flew out to Montreal to watch the draft. 

Coincidentally, this year was also the year that Fraser Minten got drafted to the Leafs. The draft happened on July 7, 2022, just two days after Minten’s birthday. According to this tweet, he had arrived at Montreal on his birthday, and would be rooming with Connor Bedard. 

“I remember before our bantam season, he wasn’t even really projected to get drafted into the WHL,” says the 17-year-old Bedard, who helped Canada advance to Saturday’s final at the world junior hockey championship at Rogers Place. “He put up, like, 70 points or something like that, so I knew he was going to be the steal of the draft. To see him going as high as he did to Toronto, one of the biggest franchises — he was pumped. It was really cool for me to see that.” “He was obviously a big help in my career,” Minten says of Bedard, “from playing with him and just learning so much from being by his side, and watching how hard he works every day and how much he gives to the game ... So, it was really cool for him to be there and it was really good for him, as well, getting a bit of a look at what it’s like in person prior to (his draft year).”

When asked about the pressure Connor was facing as the projected first overall pick, Fraser also said:

“I don’t think he worries about that stuff at all,” Minten says. “For him, it’s just about playing the game. He just loves the game, and everything that comes with it is a bonus for him. I don’t think he’s worried at all about what other people say … I think, by the end, he’ll be right where everyone hopes he is.”

Also worth highlighting that this is the title of the article all of these quotes come from:

Another fun fact about the 2022 draft; Chicago gave Toronto the pick that they used for Minten.

In a trade with Chicago, the Leafs traded Petr Mrazek and a first round pick (25th) in exchange for a second round pick (38th). The second round pick would turn out to be what the Leafs used to draft Fraser Minten. 

“And like Cowan, the Leafs were set on Minten. Though they were slated to pick at 25, they began to believe they could nab Minten later on. He was still on the board on day two at 38 after a trade with the Chicago Blackhawks allowed the Leafs to pick high in the second round.”

Also, just for the sake of including this somewhere, they also share an agent. 

The summer before the 2023-24 season began, the two of them lived together in Toronto for a few weeks. Why Connor was in Toronto is not actually known, but they’ve both brought this up multiple times—when they refer to living together, this is the time period they’re talking about. 

In this interview, Fraser gets asked about the phone calls he made after making the team and says he “... called my good buddies from junior teams and bantam midget teams I played with right away.”

According to this interview, Connor and Fraser exchanged messages of support for one another during training camp. Minten was also asked who was the better player when they were linemates in West Van: 

"Him, by a mile," Minten said. "By a mile. Hopefully we get to play against each other at some point."

After Minten made the Leafs roster, “his WHL pal Connor Bedard sent him a good luck message and said  “I hope I play against you”.”

The Leafs and Blackhawks played against each other on October 16th 2023, which was their first NHL game against one another. Connor was asked about playing against him for the first time:

“Of course you dream about it, once I got picked and we knew he was here of course—we actually lived together for a little bit this summer in Toronto, so we talked about it a bit there. I don’t know if you guys [in the media] expected him to make the team. In his mind, he expected to make the team, and I never expected anything less from him. The way he earned that spot, he showed everyone,” Bedard said. “Right when it was announced he made the team, we were fired up, talking about how it feels like yesterday we were playing on a line in bantam. It’s crazy how time flies. It’s really special.”

Minten was asked what he remembers from their days of playing together, if they ever talked about playing against each other at the NHL level:

“I don’t think we ever talked about that, obviously we both wanted that to happen—probably him more than me at that point, he probably thought it was more of a realistic possibility. But I remember he was just unreal, better than everybody and could score at will, and was also just a super humble and hardworking kid.”

Minten also got asked “how to stop him”, and said “he can do everything, so you just want to limit his space, time, and get the puck away from him.” 

Later in October, in response to a question about locker room arguments over CHL rivalries, Connor’s first example of another player who came up through the WHL was: “I grew up playing with Fraser Minten in Toronto, that’s pretty cool.”

In this interview, Minten gets asked: “I don't know how many people have asked you—probably a million—being Connor Bedards close friend and teammate, I'm assuming you're not surprised with what he's done since he left North Van, in the dub and in the NHL, probably not surprised at all?”

“No, no, not at all. He works harder than anybody else, like significantly. I think his teammates in Chicago would say the same thing. He's got a level of commitment and passion and dedication that is genuinely unmatched by some of the superstars in the NHL,  I think. I think we’ll continue to see him defy people’s expectations, and even if he doesn’t he’ll be doing everything he can to, so, I wouldn’t bet against him that’s for sure.”

In 2023, Fraser Minten was selected to be the captain for World Juniors and Connor sent him a congratulatory message. 

In this video with WJC Team Canada, in response to a question about the first time scouts started showing up at his games, Minten said: 

“I remember there started being a lot of guys in black jackets at games when I started playing with Connor. There would be lots of them because he was special—still is.”

In this Leafs TikTok where the prompt was to give a compliment to the person behind you, Minten points to his teammate’s jersey and says “best 98 out there.” Presumably a friendly chirp towards first overall 2023 draft pick Connor Bedard.

In this media availability from the Leafs-Blackhawks game in December 2024, Minten was asked what it was like to play against Connor again a year later. 

“Yeah it's awesome, anytime it’s the uh—you know, it's the NHL and we’re playing against each other. If you told us that when we were 13-14 we would’ve found it really cool, so it’s special for sure.”

Fraser Minten scored his second NHL goal against the Chicago Blackhawks later that day. 

(BONUS: Fraser usually has a crazy game when he plays against Connor. In the Pats vs Blazers game he was awarded second star for his 2 goals and 1 assist game, totaling 3 points in the Blazers 9-3 victory over the Pats. He scored his second NHL goal against the Blackhawks, helping Toronto win against Chicago 4-1. In 2025 after being recalled by the Bruins and playing vs the Blackhawks, despite a loss, he led the team in both SOG and shifts taken. Pasta went on to say that Minten’s line was the best line that night.)

After the trade to Boston, Minten spent a couple games playing in Providence before getting the call up to play for the Bruins, a couple days before the Bruins were set to play against the Blackhawks in Boston. There were no schedules the day before the game so they took the opportunity to get dinner together at Abe & Louie’s. 

“They had the opportunity to go out to dinner last night. And for Fraser Minten, he just got to town. Asked, where’d you decide to go, where’d you take him? He said ‘I googled steakhouse and some place– Abe something came up.’ I said, good choice! Abe & Louie’s!”

BONUS: idk where to put this bc for some reason I can’t find where this came from but here’s a picture of Minten wearing a Chicago Blackhawks hat from 2021 (also, somehow the only NHL teams that Minten follows on instagram are the Leafs (drafted to) the Bruins (traded to) the Canucks (vancouver kid) and the Blackhawks (???)

(same hat just backwards, from minten's instagram)

4/16/25 - this is all for now. this primer will be updated anytime something significant happens.

UPDATE - 06/20/25

adding the png version here