One telling stat, Bedard leads the team in assists with 14. The next three highest assist totals on the Hawks are defensemen each with eight. No other Hawks forward has even half the number of assists that Bedard has right now. There really isn't anyone else out there to create chances.
I am not sure that argument really holds water. He's a brilliant passer, especially with time and space, but his raw assist totals are higher than his teammates because of his PP assist totals (he has 8 PP assists, 5 of which are secondary), which is driven significantly by him having more PP ice time than anyone else. He's 2nd on the team in PP assists/60 behind Vlasic, and 4th in primary PP assists/60 behind Vlasic, Hall, and TT.
At 5v5, he's been pretty mediocre poor in terms of assists - below are his individual 5v5 ranks among Hawks with >100 mins:
- 4th in primary assists/60
- 6th in total assists/60
Here are his on ice 5v5 ranks among Hawks with >100 mins:
- 9th in on ice GF/60 (2.09)
- 6th in on ice xGF/60 (2.25)
- 10th in on ice CF/60
- 11th in on ice SCF/60
- 17th in on ice HDCF/60
His overall 5v5 scoring and individual chance creation have also been quite pedestrian:
- 5th in points/60
- 7th in goals/60
- 3rd in ixG/60
- 4th in iCF/60 and iSCF/60
- 12th in iHDCF/60
While he's very clearly the most gifted offensive talent on the team, he's struggling to generate high danger chances for himself
and his teammates. His on ice HDCF/60 ranks worse than his iHDCF/60. For all the talk about how terrible the Hawks are, he should be
absolutely lapping his teammates in these core offensive metrics.
In the past, you could blame his teammates poor finishing ability on some of Bedard's relative offensive struggles, but his linemates have shot at a much higher rate this year than last year, and are finishing much better than Bedard is himself. So the poor teammate excuse doesn't hold nearly as much water as it did last year.
His teammates are just getting a lot less high danger chances with Bedard vs last year. And Bedard's individual high danger rates have absolutely plummeted as well. Look at the splits below:
I believe some of these drops are due to him playing a more responsible 2 way game this year, as he's been much more conservative about flying the zone, which is how he generated much of his high danger chances last year. But I think a lot of these issues stem from other teams learning how to keep him to the outside and trusting their goaltenders to save his perimeter wrist shot.
If he doesn't make significant improvements in his speed and strength (which don't look all that improved vs last year), he will need to make some significant adaptations to his game to become an elite 5v5 offensive player.
And Bedard can't exactly have a second Bedard on his line. There just isn't a Malkin or Draisaitl out there for him his second year. Not saying that means he'd be winning an Art Ross if there were, but it undoubtedly makes a difference when the team has another Forward out there to get attention and play off. Outside of Bedard they have Ryan Donato on an absolute heater and are getting subpar contributions out of the players they likely would have hoped could be more support.
No doubt Bedard would benefit from having an elite linemate, but McDavid and Crosby didn't need a Malkin or Draisaitl to dominate the league as
rookies, so I am pretty confident they would have been just fine without them in their 2nd years.
- Rookie McDavid was 3rd in pts/gp and 2nd in 5v5 p/60 (>500 mins) with 2.73 p/60, while playing with Jordan Eberle (1.89 p/60) and Benoit Pouliot (2.20 p/60).
- Rookie Crosby was 2nd in league scoring from December 23rd onward, with Colby Armstrong, Tomas Surovy, and Andy Hilbert as his primary wingers.
So it's pretty ridiculous to suggest that Crosby and McDavid
wouldn't have dominated the league as sophomores without Malkin or Draisaitl.
I think he'll be fine long-tem. Right now, he needs to continue to get stronger, continue improving on his skating speed and hopefully the forward talent around him will gradually improve because it'd be hard not to. For stretches, you can see he's been rather discouraged because of a slump that he's never experienced before. Battling through it is all just part of becoming an NHL player.
I agree that he will figure it out, but he'll never be a McDavid/Crosby level threat that many have been asserting. I really think his struggles to meet those ridiculous expectations really hurt his confidence this season, and have been a big part of why he's regressed so much vs last year.
Hopefully this is the last year his name is mentioned in the same sentence as 87 and 97. Let him focus more on becoming the best player he can be, instead of constantly struggling to live up to impossible expectations.
I'm rooting for him.
