Bednar joined the ECHL's South Carolina Stingrays halfway through the 1995–96 season, posting 24 points and 126 penalty minutes in his first 39 games. From 1995 to 1998, he played mostly with the Stingrays, with small stints in the American Hockey League (AHL) with the St. John's Maple Leafs and Rochester Americans. He played the 1998–99 season with the Grand Rapids Griffins of the International Hockey League (IHL), racking up 21 points and 220 PIMS in 71 games with the Griffins. Bednar re-joined the Stingrays for the 1999–2000 season and played two more seasons with the Rays. He announced his retirement after the 2001–02 season.
Coaching career
After retiring as a player, Bednar remained with the Stingrays as an assistant coach from 2002 to 2007. After head coach Jason Fitzsimmons stepped down, Bednar was named his successor for the 2007–08 season. His first season as coach was extremely successful, with the Stingrays winning 47 games in the regular season, and making it to the American Conference finals in the playoffs. After another successful season in 2008–09, the Stingrays won the Kelly Cup, giving Bednar his first championship as a coach in only his second season.
After winning the Cup, Bednar stepped down as head coach of the Stingrays to become assistant coach of the Abbotsford Heat of the AHL for the 2009–10 season. He was then the head coach of the AHL's Peoria Rivermen from 2010 through 2012.
The Columbus Blue Jackets hired Bednar as an assistant coach for their minor league AHL affiliate, the Springfield Falcons, beginning with the 2012–13 season. After serving in this role for two seasons, he was promoted to head coach following the promotion of Brad Larsen to Columbus' staff. For the 2015–16 season, Columbus shifted their AHL affiliation to the Lake Erie Monsters in Cleveland. Bednar followed the affiliation to Cleveland and continued as head coach. Lake Erie went 15–2 in the 2016 Calder Cup playoffs to capture the franchise's first championship and the first for the city of Cleveland since the original Cleveland Barons won the 1964 Calder Cup.[2] He was later rewarded by the Blue Jackets with a two-year contract extension through to the 2018–19 season on July 19, 2016.[3]
On August 25, 2016, Bednar was named head coach of the Colorado Avalanche of the National Hockey League (NHL), replacing Patrick Roy.[4][5] Bednar was hired less than a month before training camp, and did not have enough time to implement his own system or hire his own staff, and was forced to retain Roy's assistants.[citation needed] Despite having talented players, such as Nathan MacKinnon, Gabriel Landeskog and Matt Duchene on the roster, the team never recovered from a 4–21–1 December and January and slumped to only 48 points, the worst record in the league. It was also one of the worst records for a non-expansion team since 1967, and the worst since the team moved from Quebec City in 1995.
Bednar didn't take long to bring the Avalanche back to respectability. In his second season in Denver, Bednar guided the team to a 47-point improvement. The team faced some adversity early in the season with the distraction of Duchene's public trade request. Following the trade, Bednar guided the team to one of the hottest second half records, returning them to the playoffs for the first time in four years. After the Avalanche's first round exit in six games to the Nashville Predators, Bednar was signed to a one-year contract extension on April 23, 2018.[6] A few days after signing a new contract, Bednar was nominated for the Jack Adams Award.[7]
In Bednar's third season coaching the Avalanche, he led the team to back-to-back playoff appearances for the first time since Joel Quenneville in 2003–04 and 2005–06. The Avalanche defeated the Calgary Flames 4–1 in the Western Conference's first round, and then were defeated in the second round in seven games by the San Jose Sharks. On July 9, 2019, Bednar signed a two-year contract extension.[8] In 2021–22, after earning a franchise-record 119 points, Bednar led the Avalanche to the third Stanley Cup in franchise history when his team defeated the Tampa Bay Lightning, who were defending back-to-back Stanley Cup champions and had won 11 straight postseason series. Notably, they only lost four of their 20 playoff games (16–4).[9]
Mainly on the strength of the 2021–22 season, Bednar began the 2022–23 season with the most wins in the Colorado portion of Nordiques/Avalanche history. He won his 265th game with the Avalanche on January 21, 2023, with a 2–1 shootout win over the Seattle Kraken. This tied Michel Bergeron for the most wins in Nordiques/Avalanche history.[10] He passed Bergeron in the next game, on January 24, with a 3–2 win over the Washington Capitals.[11]
