Has Connor Bedard quietly became underrated ?

[BHFAN92]

He was thought to potentially be on the level of Crosby/McDavid (I guess you are one of those people). Both players saw their teams take huge point jumps in their 2nd seasons.

yr 2 Crosby..checks notes has Mario Lemieux, Mark Recci, John LeClair on roster as veteran....Yr 2 Bedard..checks notes has Foligno, Maroon, Bertuzzi on roster as veteran. Bedard absolutely has not put up anything close to Crosby or McDavid but lets not pretend he is playing on anything remotely close to what both of those guys had coming into the league as far as help. Bedard has none end of story

 

[WarriorofTime]

How can you say this with certainty? Mario hit another level in his 2nd season on a terrible Pens. Great players tend to produce regardless of their teammates.

Some guys like Crosby hit a high level early and then sort of stagnate, some guys like McDavid hit a high level early and then just keep going, some guys like MacKinnon don't hit a high level early but then eventually do, some guys like Laine even show a lot of promise early but then fade off. It's all a bit early to say... all the stuff with chasing ghosts and I guess sort of debating stuff from two years ago is a bit tedious, but keep can discuss whatever they want.

All we really know at this point is Bedard is not the best player in the world right now. But he has shown a lot of offensive ability in comparison to similarly aged peers (I posted U20 scoring stats from the past 8 years a little upthread, the short of it, is NOBODY is coming in and completely tearing up the NHL right away at the moment). And compared to a lot of players like Celebrini, Michkov, Carlsson or Fantilli that are either right there or not their team's leading scorers, he is far and away asked to carry the biggest offensive scoring load as there hasn't been a teammate to be close to him.