I know this is old and I'm not here to make one side feel stupid or anything like that.
just wondering now that we are a year + into Bedard's career would you still make the choice you made last year?
Yes, I still take the sure thing in Hughes. Bedard
could still end up better, but it looks less likely now than it did even before. And even if he ends up better, it's not likely to be by a meaningful margin. 5 goals and 23 points in his last 33 games is pretty alarming - his goal scoring is really not translating, which is a bit of a surprise. I didn't expect him to hit 50 out of the gate, but I thought 30 would be a pretty easy bar for him to clear (I believe I projected 36-38 goals for his rookie season).
Since mid March of last season, both Donato and Reichel have more primary 5v5 points than Bedard, despite Bedard playing ~50% more minutes than them. He's only produced at 1.36 p/60 at 5v5. Yeah, his on ice sh% is unsustainably low at 6.1%, but it probably shouldn't be any higher than 9% based on the his GF vs xGF numbers.
The only thing that would keep me from picking Hughes is injury concerns. But I am pretty confident that a healthy Hughes will not be meaningfully worse than Bedard long term. I'm not sure the inverse is true.
