What’s the cause of Connor Bedard’s sophomore slump?

There has been non-stop hype surrounding Connor Bedard since he was granted exceptional status in March 2020.

Throughout his junior career, Bedard lived up to the hype. He collected 134 goals and 271 points in just 134 games in the WHL, and after a modest first appearance at the 2022 World Juniors, where he only While he scored four goals and eight points in seven games, he reached a whole different level just a few months later at the 2023 tournament with nine goals and 23 points in seven games.

This move made Bedard the unquestionable first pick in the 2023 NHL Entry Draft, and the Chicago Blackhawks were lucky enough to be the team that received that pick. While many expected him to blow the doors off his first season, he had a merely outstanding rookie season with 22 goals and 61 points in 68 games. It wasn’t quite on the same level as what generational players like Sidney Crosby and Connor McDavid achieved in their rookie seasons, but it was still the 10th highest points per game rate among rookies in the salary cap era, and that’s what earned him the award a Calder Trophy.

In the offseason, the Blackhawks made sure to add a few more offensive weapons like Tyler Bertuzzi and Teuvo Teravainen (not to mention that Taylor Hall would play more than 10 games this season) to ensure that Bedard’s best linemates weren’t Philipp Kurashev and are Nick Foligno. Combine that with the natural progress he would make in his second season, and many expected a 2024-25 season that would truly make Bedard one of the league’s best.

And yet, through 28 games, Bedard has left a lot to be desired. He only scored 21 points this year, 0.75 points per game, a step down from last year’s 0.9, but even more disappointing was his point total. His shooting was one of the most exciting aspects of his game, and he has only scored five goals this year.

So what exactly happens to Bedard this season?

When a player performs poorly, the first thing to look at is how unlucky he was. From that perspective, Bedard has certainly had more bad luck this season. His 7.25% shooting rate is a drop from his 10.68%, and at 5-on-5 it’s even more drastic, as his 6.25% shooting rate is a far cry from his 11.68% shot in the achieved last season.

The only problem with using individual shooting luck is that the shooting percentage is less fixed than it was 10 years ago. Because players are much more skilled and players’ shooting abilities vary more, shooting percentage assessments should be based on the player’s career average rather than a fixed league-wide norm.

In Bedard’s case, we still don’t know where this is so early in his career. He could be a 6-7% professional shooter or a 10-11% professional shooter or anywhere in between, and while he’s probably on the higher end of that spectrum, we’ll need a larger sample size of Bedard to be sure.

As for Bedard’s on-ice shooting (which takes into account the shooting of all teammates on the ice), it’s taken a small step back, but not to the point where it’s notable. His all-strength ice shooting percentage of 10.89 isn’t a huge drop from 11.55, and at 5-on-5 it’s 7.59% compared to 8.73%. With that in mind, it makes sense that his .571 assists per game this season is almost identical to his .565 assists per game last season. It’s so close that I had to put a third decimal place to show the small difference.

So his teammates are still scoring, he just can’t. Next, you can look at how many expected goals he scores. Last season he scored 0.98 goals per 60 minutes at all levels and 0.92 per 60 minutes at 5v5. In terms of expected goals, he scored 1.13 at all levels and 0.94 at 5v5 , which meant he was -0.15 below expectations and -0.02 goals per 60 in the respective game states. That was relatively similar, but it also suggested that Bedard might have been even better last season if he had had a little more luck scoring on the power play.

This season there is a larger gap between Bedard’s target and expected goal production, as he is -0.29 goals per 60 below expected at all strengths and -0.31 goals below expected at 5v5, so he has a bit of a gap there should see improvement. The problem, however, is that the rate at which he scores expected goals has also declined. At all strengths he averages just 0.82 expected goals per 60, and at 5v5 it’s just 0.72, a decrease of 0.31 and 0.22 respectively from last season at their respective stages. So even if he scored exactly as many goals as he expected, he would only score 18 goals in 68 games, compared to the 22 he scored at that pace last year.

Sometimes players sacrifice some of their offense to improve on defense, but that isn’t the case with Bedard either. Among the 315 forwards who have played at least 250 minutes at 5-on-5 this season, Bedard ranks 217th in defensive goals above replacement with a -0.6 using Evolving Hockey’s regulated adjusted plus/minus model 276th in expected goals against per 60 0.131. That’s not terrible, but it certainly doesn’t show that he’s trying to improve his defensive game at the expense of his offense.

Some of his struggles can likely be attributed to Bedard not playing with consistent linemates all season. He has gone 435:37 at 5-on-5 this season and yet he has not spent more than 41% of ice time with a single player, with Teravainen having the most overlap at 40.3% of those minutes. After that, Kurashev is the only player above 30%, while Foligno and Hall are at around 25%.

Most surprising is the fact that Bedard and Bertuzzi have played so little together. Bertuzzi was only in action for 11.5% of Bedard’s 5-on-5 minutes, which seems unusual considering that the power-forward style of play that Bertuzzi offers appears to be tailor-made for Bedard, much like that, what Bertuzzi has done in the past along with John Tavares, William Nylander, David Pastrnak, Dylan Larkin and Lucas Raymond.

Pretty much every line combination Bedard has spent significant time with this season hasn’t had three players considered solid offensive threats. While he has played with Teravainen, Hall and Bertuzzi at various points during the season, he has only played 52:06 minutes of ice time with two of those three this year. Usually those lines included Foligno, Kurashev, Ryan Donato, Ilya Mikheyev, Jason Dickinson or Joey Anderson.

I understand that you want to spread your offense across your roster to make the matches more difficult, but that’s clearly not working for both Bedard and the Blackhawks this season, so you should at least try to close that top line for a significant stretch occupy. Sure, that’s what we’ve seen over the years with players from other generations like Sidney Crosby and Connor McDavid, but Bedard needs to show he’s at that level before giving him those minutes.

It also doesn’t help that the Blackhawks haven’t played too many of their other top young prospects in the NHL alongside him. Crosby had Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang at his side in the first few years, and McDavid had Leon Draisaitl, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Taylor Hall and Jordan Eberle at his side.

Only four Blackhawks draft picks have played more than 50 games in the NHL in the last five years (excluding Bedard): Kevin Korchinski, Lukas Reichel, Wyatt Kaiser and Isaak Phillips. Reichel is the only striker, Phillips is not currently in the squad and Kaiser is the only other one not playing in the baseline or pairing.

It’s also important to note that development in the NHL is not linear. Not everyone can go from 87 to 100 points in their second season like McDavid or from 102 to 120 like Crosby. There is one player who is currently on the cusp of generational talent who found himself in a similar, if not worse, situation to Bedard. I’ll keep him a secret for now and call him Player X.

In Bedard’s rookie season, he scored 22 goals and 61 points. In Player X’s rookie season, he scored 24 goals and 63 points in 14 more games. Both players were first overall and both won the Calder Trophy with their performances. In Player X’s second season, he only scored 14 goals and 38 points in 64 games. If Bedard continues at this pace through 64 games, he’ll actually have 11 goals and 48 points. Player X scored 52 and 53 points respectively in the following seasons.

Have you already guessed who this mysterious player is? If not, it’s Nathan MacKinnon.

What is often forgotten about MacKinnon’s career is that he was simply a “pretty good” player for his first four years. There’s a reason he had a contract that made him $6.3 million per year from 2016 to 2023, and that’s because he played like a player who was 8.63% of the salary cap at the time his team earned. But in his fifth season he scored 39 goals and 97 points in 74 games, and after that he never had a season under 1.2 points per game.

Two things can be taken away from this comparison. First, the Blackhawks could have the opportunity to secure a contract steal for Bedard if he plays at a really good, but not league-best, level over the next year or two. If we apply MacKinnon’s initial cap hit percentage of his contract to the 2024-25 salary cap, that would mean Bedard would have a cap hit of $7.5 million. If you want to take into account the projected figure of $92.4 million for next season that Gary Bettman floated on Tuesday (which would be in the window for Bedard’s extensions), it’s $7.97 million. This assumes Bedard wants to sign after a down year, but that would be a great scenario for Chicago.

Secondly, not every superstar who changes the franchise immediately launches their career. MacKinnon is often considered the second-best player in the league right now, but he fell far short of that level in his first four seasons. Just because Bedard didn’t blow us away this year doesn’t mean he won’t in the future.

But even then, there are some situational issues within the Blackhawks that have hampered Bedard somewhat this season. They only changed their head coach a week ago, so perhaps that has had an impact (he has two points but no goals in two games so far under Anders Sorensen). It’s possible we could even see Bedard at a whole new level this season, but barring some luck going his way, it won’t just happen.

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