Blackhawks’ Adam Gajan has already witnessed Connor Bedard’s skill

For the famous goal in last year’s world junior championships that made Connor Bedard a global icon, Blackhawks second-round pick Adam Gajan had a view shared by no one else.

He watched Bedard deke past his right pad and tap the puck into the net.

Indeed, Gajan was actually the goaltender for the Slovakian team that Bedard’s instant highlight-reel goal eliminated in the quarterfinals. In a strange twist, he and Bedard are now both Hawks prospects.

“We met at the [scouting] combine in the gym,” Gajan said at the draft. “I told him, ‘Well, maybe now we’ll be teammates.’ Now he’ll just score on me in practice and not in a game.”

The other funny part of the story is that despite the tournament’s enduring highlight depicting a less-than-ideal moment for Gajan, his overall tournament performance put him on the Hawks’ radar in a good way — eventually leading to his selection, earlier than projected, with the 35th overall pick. Hawks scouting director Mike Doneghey called the world juniors Gajan’s “coming-out party.”

Gajan, a native of the Slovakian mountain town of Poprad, was initially designated to be Slovakia’s third-string goalie. But a surprise came after the team’s first- and second-string goalies struggled in a 5-2 tournament-opening loss to Finland.

“I wasn’t supposed to play any games,” Gajan said. “[But] the first game didn’t go well, and at a morning skate before the [second] game against the U.S.A., the goalie coach told me, ‘I’m going in.’”

Gajan immediately thrived, saving 33 of 36 shots in a 6-3 upset win over the U.S., then posting a 28-save shutout in a 3-0 win over Latvia.

Even in the Canada loss, Gajan had stopped a ridiculous 53 of 56 shots before Bedard’s eruption, almost singlehandedly getting Slovakian into overtime against the overwhelming favorites. He admitted he was so tired that he “doesn’t remember much” about the decisive play; he lay on the ice in exhaustion afterward.

Six months later, Gajan is the Hawks’ first drafted goalie since 2020 (Drew Commesso) and highest-drafted goalie since 2001 (when they regretfully took Adam Munro with the 29th pick).

As he moves on from Chippewa of the NAHL to Green Bay of the USHL next season, then to the University of Minnesota-Duluth in 2024-25, his progress will be interesting to follow.

Slovakian generation

Gajan also shares plenty of connections with Martin Misiak, the forward the Hawks selected with the 55th pick.

Their hometowns are just 60 miles apart, they’ve known each other since age 10, they both played on the Slovakian world-juniors team — although Misiak found himself further away from the spotlight, recording zero points in three games — and they’re both part of a golden generation of young players in Slovakia.

After just four Slovakians were picked in the 2019, 2020 and 2021 drafts combined, six were picked in 2022 — including the Nos. 1 and 2 overall picks, Juraj Slafkovsky (Canadiens) and Simon Nemec (Devils) — and eight were picked in 2023, including No. 10 pick Dalibor Dvorsky (Blues).

“We’ve all known each other; there’s super good chemistry,” Misiak said. “We had played like 300 games together even before the national team started. That shows the work that we did. I’m super happy the Slovakian guys are getting drafted as much as they can be.”

Misiak did jump the Atlantic to spend this past spring with Youngstown of the USHL, but it hasn’t yet been determined where he’ll play next season. Doneghey said several Canadian junior teams are trying to acquire his rights.