The experiment of the weekend: Trevor versus Connor, not head-to-head, but how would each perform in similar circumstances? Yesterday afternoon, it was Bedard’s chance to impress, and he had a game with a couple of late flashes but that was otherwise routine. This was Chicago in LA, with the Blackhawks coming from behind to tie and eventually grab two points in a shootout. See the story elsewhere at IH. Now it’s Zegras’s turn, with those same Blackhawks in Anaheim for a 5pm contest on Sunday.
The question you have to ask is whether “spectacular” is the measuring stick on an every-night basis. That would seem both a bit unfair but also exactly what many fans expect, or at least, want. And fair or not, Zegras did have his moments in the game. Here’s some detail.
In the first period, he picked up a puck loose in the corner and fed the front of the net. Later he passed to Radko Gudas, a defenseman playing low in the Chicago zone, just off the right side of the net, again out of the corner. No big deal? Well, “out of the corner” means he was in the corner, something Bedard was decidedly not on Saturday. Still in the first twenty minutes, Zegras took the puck on a pass in the center of the ice and flipped it in on goal, then chased. The goalie covered it.
Zegras plays on the second power play unit. On this night, he stood in at defense, then went down low. Later in the period, he was seen coming out of the corner from left to right, legs in an inverse V for stability, stick on the ice. His shot hit a leg.
Period two, Zegras started out kind of like Bedard had been Saturday, “floaty,” as Zegras took a long shift gliding out near the Ducks’ blue line waiting for a breakout pass that never came. When Chicago next came out of their zone, he made a lazy poke check and watched Craig Smith go right around him and eventually get a shot on goal. He gave a puck away near the end of the next Ducks’ PP near the Chicago blue line. So the middle period wasn’t stellar.
The third period saw #11 and Cutter Gauthier buzzing, with shots and rebounds the result, but no scoring.
With 14:40 remaining, Zegras was out on the power play for almost the full two minutes. At one point, he kind of loaf=skated back into the Anaheim zone, deep, circled, and went towards center for the breakout. He cleverly played the puck off the boards to himself at center, and carried it into the zone. He spent most of the PP at the left point, where he repeatedly played catch with the right point man. As he thought about feeding it to the net, he often couldn’t see a lane, and so instead put it low left, to no good effect.
Other Zegras moments included more than one instance when he held the puck too long close to the net. Once this happened when he was fed in the slot off the rush. He held onto it so long that had a poor angle for his shot. Same thing with 3:50 left—he held too long on a pass right to left across the zone.
Perhaps it was some of these plays that Coach Cronin had in mind in his post-game comments, which he began by saying, “I think we had a season-high 92 shot attempts tonight, but we could have shot 20 more times.”
He explained that his team needs to play a more direct, straight-line game: “You don’t want to take the creativity away. You want the guys to be able to make plays, but you also want them to prioritize shooting pucks in the primary scoring areas.” He would later ad, “We just don’t prioritize the shot after the shot.” He cited the fact that several Ducks players, including Zegras, have not been scoring, but hinted that this is not something that would be so forever. “You shoot the puck, and good things happen,” he said, admitting that it’s a cliché.
But what he later said is worth digesting: “We have to send the puck up the ice as quick as we can, vertically, and feed the forwards. Our game goes sideways when we bring it back, and we try to make lateral passes. It stalls our speed.” He’s describing how the Ducks have played—diagonal passes—forever, and what is exciting to watch. And, further, what Zegras privileges as his approach.
The numbers on the night for Zegras looked like this: 18:27 Ice Time, 2 shots, 2 missed shots, and 3/7 in the faceoff circle. But do numbers tell the story? (Not a question for the analytics crowd, I admit.) Yes, and no. What my eyes tell me is that Bedard can play better than he did on Saturday, and that Zegras can be more productive than he was on Sunday. This because Bedard looked more powerfully engaged than he had been up in LA Saturday. In period one, he fed what might best be called a short diagonal “vision pass” from the low left zone area to the net on the power play.
In period two, Bedard beat a Ducks’ player in a race for the puck on the right side of the ice, then managed to get to the net even as someone caught him up from behind. He slid into the goalie still possessing the puck, and while he and Lukas Dostal ended up in the net, the puck did not. Still, tremendous effort, and rugged.
Bedard notched three assists in addition, and 5 shots on goal. One observer I spoke to after the game said it was the best game he’s seen Bedard play thus far this year.
So who wins our little contest? Bedard for magical skill, Zegras because despite the results on the night, he is looking more fully engaged in the game than when he was Bedard’s age. Back then, it was much less evident that “Z” cared about the other four players on the ice. His game is maturing from that, even if he isn’t able to carry the Ducks’ offense single-handedly, as superstars are sometimes wished to do.
