Connor Bedard's Historic Start

Connor Bedard has already reached unchartered territory.

Yes, it has been two games. But what we’ve seen through two games feels historic. Per NaturalStatTrick.com:

Is it? 43 minutes, 1 goal + 1 assist, 11 shots on 18 attempts and 1.59 ixG. This is superstar-level stuff, and this is a player on a bad team who lost his “training wheels” in Taylor Hall early in game #2 of his career.

Any player averaging 0.8 ixG and 9 shot attempts per game is going to stand out.. but it’s only been two games. That got me thinking… this must have happened before, right?

I resorted to MoneyPuck.com’s shot by shot data to find an answer. Since I am merely an Excel donkey, I was only able to export 2014-2022 for this analysis. That amounts to ~990k rows of data. So… it’s incomplete for sure.

Connor Bedard’s volume has been unmatched through a player’s first two NHL games (my process highlighted players in 2014’s first two games as counting, even if they were in the league in 2013 or earlier.. I’ve manually removed them. I think. Don’t yell at me), with my accounting showing the following:

Since 2014, Victor Olofsson seems to be the leader in “shot attempts through his first two games” at 15, three less than Bedard. He tallied only 0.84 ixG in those attempts, with his stronger game looking like this, from Hockeyviz.com:

Nine attempts and a primary assist, followed by six and a PPG the next game. Pretty good! Worth noting: he was 23, coming over from Sweden in March. Not quite a 18-year-old who is the fourteenth youngest player in NHL history. And that kid was significantly better.

Also on the list: An unfortunate part of this process is that a game doesn’t show up for a player if they didn’t have a shot attempt.. well, what do you know, Kailer Yamamoto often has games without a shot attempt. Game #1 was a no-show, while #2 was decent with #3 containing 8 shots and 1.3(!) ixG.. of course he didn’t score, however.

A player who was, rather famously, 18 at the point highlighted in this table is David Pastrnak, who was drafted 25th in 2014 but immediately started in the AHL and earned a November call-up. After a non-descript 8-minute TOI performance in game #1, he broke out with 10 shot attempts and 0.43 ixG playing alongside Bergeron and Marchand, the beginning of what was to come.

Sorting by ixG in the first two games, we get a couple other candidates to review in Bedard’s ballpark of 1.59 ixG.. Yamamoto we can cross out as cheating the games played system, as mentioned above.

Andrei Kuzmenko came over from the KHL at age 26 and immediately produced, with a whopping 1.7 ixG on 12 attempts. I’m not going to break down every shot here (though HockeyViz allows you to do just that if you wish), but here’s a fun visual:

It’s hard to make out but notice the lack of “Kuzmenko” on the circles throughout the offensive zone. Add two more on the PP from the exact same location, and this feels like an Elias Pettersson-driven result rather than something Kuzmenko was doing. Not necessarily what we are looking for here, but interesting nonetheless.

Brady Tkachuk debuted at 19 for the Senators, leading things off with a rather boring 15-minute effort in game 1 (with zero power play responsibilities) and following it up with a 0.97 ixG performance in an 11-goal game (he had two of them).

Most of Brady’s sheer ixG output came from the PP whack-a-puck he is now widely known for. There was at least some variety (and his 5v5 goal came on a nice shot from outside the dots), but let’s take a quick look at Bedard’s profile:

Yes.. that will do. There’s really no disputing that Bedard is creating his own shots. There’s simply no way to stop him from doing whatever he wants.. and he wants to shoot.

This is merely a continuation of the otherworldly shot generation Bedard showed in juniors. Bedard is the red arrow, miles ahead of everyone not named Olen Zellweger.

Also worth noting: It is Connor Bedard, not Connor McDavid or any other Canadian, who possesses the WJC Team Canada points record. He put up a stunning 23 (nine goals, 14 assists) in only seven games… as an underage player. He can do it all.

So.. this start to an NHL career is unprecedented. But to this point, everything about Connor Bedard is unprecedented. It feels wild to say about an 18-year-old on a bad team, but the sky is the absolute limit for Bedard. While we may have already known this, I’m not sure we knew just how soon this sort of dominance could appear.

I’ll be watching closely to see what comes next.