Your comment reads like someone who hasn't seen Bedard play, has watched some clips perhaps, and is looking at the whirlwind of hype for lesser players like Lafreniere (and past unremarkable #1s) and using that to justify being super cautious, so my apologies if you're actually well versed in Bedard.
Study his game for yourself, rather than relying on hype and expectations of other people. This isn't the old times where the average person needed to rely on the scouting reports from the 'professionals'.
It's one thing to get sucked up in the hype about the "Next One" when it was a newer idea and the average slob didn't have the kind of access we enjoy now. Now it's pointless to try and attach that kind of label to any player.
Crosby and McDavid have been the only players with more legitimate hype than Bedard since Lindros and as long as one isn't completely unreasonable, they met and surpassed expectations. Bedard is just below them, so expecting him to be better than either is fairly unrealistic. But he certainly has the tools to hit the ground running and put up a rookie season to remember.
Many of the greats have a somewhat slow start during the opening month (if one calls hovering around PPG slow). If he's healthy, we should know if he's successfully making the transition by the time the calendar flips to 2024 (roughly halfway through his rookie campaign). We should know by then if we have been too optimistic (myself) or too pessimistic (imo, many of the answers in this thread).
While my own expectations are 50 goals/105-110 points, anything 90 and above is a huge success. I'll be watching most of his games when possible, so if I see multiple instances of him creating offense throughout the game and it's not translating to points, it'll still be very encouraging.
