Better than McDavid? Bedard blowing everyone's expectations out of the water

Jan 3 2023, 7:57 pm

If anyone had any words left to describe Connor Bedard, they went out the window on Monday night.

Bedard’s dazzling overtime winner in the quarterfinal against Slovakia kept Canada’s 2023 World Juniors hopes alive, sending them into the semifinal on Wednesday night against their American rivals.

And naturally, all the talk in the game’s postgame coverage was about Bedard, who now has 21 points in just five games at this year’s tournament.

Bedard has already broken the single-tournament and total points records for Canadian players, while he’s got an outside shot at topping Peter Forsberg’s 31 points for Sweden at the 1993 tournament.

But whether Canada beats the Americans or not, Bedard will have two more games to cement his World Juniors legacy before being the NHL’s No. 1 pick at whatever team is fortunate enough to select him next summer.

Bedard’s already won a World Juniors — in the strange, poorly attended summer edition of the tournament in August 2022.

“I’m not focused on personal success here,” Bedard said to TSN after Canada’s win on Monday. “I want another gold medal … and that’s all I want.”

Sure, kid.

Of course, everyone wants to win a championship on one of the world’s biggest stages, especially in front of a home crowd.

But from a historical context, how Bedard’s team does in the next two games is almost an afterthought: as much as the tournament’s about which one of Canada, Russia, Sweden, or the USA can still win it, it’s also largely remembered as a showcase of the game’s biggest future stars.

And at just age 17, Bedard is, well, maybe the best teenage Canadian star anyone’s seen since arguably Wayne Gretzky.

Yes, he’s that good.

When it comes to Canadian hockey phenoms over the past 40 years, a few names typically come to mind: Gretzky, Mario Lemieux, Sidney Crosby, Eric Lindros, and Connor McDavid.

But Bedard is fast working his way into that conversation.

His numbers with the WHL’s Regina Pats — 62 points in 28 regular season games this year — might not quite measure up to the other talents on the list, but they’re at least in the same ballpark.

And small sample size be damned, Canada’s latest phenom is blowing away everyone’s expectations of what a good World Juniors performance looks like.

Here’s how Bedard’s performance at the junior level compares to some of the biggest names to come out of Canada in the last few decades:

Best Junior season Best World Juniors Best NHL season
Connor Bedard 2.28 4.2 ?
Connor McDavid 2.55 1.57 1.89
Sidney Crosby 2.70 1.5 1.52
Eric Lindros 2.61 2.4 1.58
Mario Lemieux 4.02 1.42 2.67
Wayne Gretzky 2.88 2.83 2.77

But as good as a player can be at the junior level, it’s really all about what they can do in the pros.

It’s an inexact science, but truly elite players generally end up being, well, truly elite in the pros.

We’ll keep to comparing MVP awards and Stanley Cups, as it’s too hard to try to accurately compare eras and levels of competition.

Gretzky won eight Hart Trophies in a row to start his career, a feat we’ll likely never see again.

Bedard won’t be Gretzky, but he could easily have as good of an individual career as anyone since.

Lemieux had the issue of playing much of his prime overlapping with Gretzky but still picked up a trio of MVP awards in 1988, 1993, and 1996.

Lemieux also had a pair of second-place finishes to Gretzky and battled Hodgkin’s Lymphoma that sent him into a series of off-and-on retirements. As a team, he finished his career with two Stanley Cups, winning in 1991 and 1992 with the Pittsburgh Penguins.

Injuries also decimated Lindros’ career, but he fulfilled his potential as one of the best players of his era when he won the Hart Trophy in 1994-95. Lindros never got his hands on the Stanley Cup as a player, but when he was healthy proved himself as among the game’s elite.

Crosby’s picked the NHL MVP up twice: as a 19-year-old in 2006-07 and again at age 26 in 2013-14. McDavid is also a two-time winner at just age 25 and is the runaway favourite to win his third this season.

But while it may seem like McDavid may be the shoo-in Hart favourite every season until he chooses to retire, voter fatigue, an ever-replenishing crop of talent, and the realities of aging curves make it unlikely he’ll just keep winning year after year.

Just eight players in the game’s history have won three or more Hart Trophies, while just three: Gretzky, Gordie Howe, and Eddie Shore have won four or more.

Of course, while Crosby is a three-time Stanley Cup champion, McDavid and his Edmonton Oilers are searching for their first title since 1990.

If Bedard wants to get his name into the “best since Gretzky” conversation, he’ll need something in the ballpark of a pair of Stanley Cups and two or three MVPs, to boot, not to mention high-end production year in and year out.

He still has plenty to prove at the professional level. But at any other stage he’s ever played at, Bedard has passed with flying colours.

While Crosby and Bedard won’t have too much time overlapping in the pro ranks, the 25-year-old McDavid’s still likely got over a decade of high-level NHL play ahead of him, fingers crossed.

If history repeats itself, two guys named Connor should be competing for a Hart Trophy within no time.

Adam LaskarisAdam Laskaris

+ Offside
+ Hockey
+ Oilers
+ World Juniors
+ NHL Draft
+ Canada
ADVERTISEMENT