One was born in 2001, one in 2005. One is Canadian, one is American. One was drafted first overall, a spot seemingly appointed for him from when he was a pre-teen. The other came onto the radar a little bit later, and ended up going to his NHL team in round one, but not first overall — ninth. Now both are in the NHL, and while their teams play each other Sunday, they won’t exactly play each other head to head. Top forwards don’t often do that, what with checking lines employed to control players highly likely to score a goal or two on a given night.
Despite that, we’re going to play a game. Call it “Trevor versus Connor” (Zegras and Bedard) and the idea is to closely observe what each player does in similar conditions in subsequent games. First, Bedard on Saturday versus the Kings, and let’s admit that this is the more difficult matchup as opposed to Sunday’s forthcoming Chicago-versus-Anaheim tilt. Second, on Sunday, Zegras versus the Blackhawks. What you’re reading here is the Saturday installment, observing Zegras in Los Angeles.
It was a game where the Kings came out fast and Chicago was nearly invisible in the first period. LA took a 2-0 lead through two periods, then sat back. Chicago tied, LA went ahead, Chicago tied with 30 seconds remaining, and then the Blackhawks won in a shootout.
Let’s start at the end with the numbers. Bedard ended the game with no points in nearly minutes of play but with a shootout goal. Just to put that into perspective, at the end of two periods, he had 12:10 of ice time and 17 seconds of possession time. This was partly due to the Chicago team’s parade to the penalty box, where they spent considerable time in periods one and two. (He doesn’t kill penalties.) And maybe the low possession number is a matter of his style of play, or the fact that a scorer doesn’t need to possess the puck that much. Just grab it and flick it off his stick and into the net in a split second.
Still, his game on this mid-day Saturday might be described as a series of floats. Float behind the net after the puck off a faceoff. Float back into your own zone, then pick up speed and join the rush, expecting, and getting, a pass from the defense so that three players hit the LA blue line at speed.
The problem is, he did this twice to no effect, including once on the power play, in period two. Both times, it was a harmless dribble into the Kings’ possession. What’s missing here? It might be that Bedard has no one to play with, a problem Chicago is slowly trying to remedy, as with the addition of players like his right-winger, Ryan Donato, sitting on six goals for the year. (Bedard has three, with six assists). It might be that just because we’re watching doesn’t mean he’s going to be brilliant on a given night. On this one, he was all but ineffectual, a one-trick pony whose presence didn’t mark itself on the game, at least not until the later going.
There was one late moment of brilliance where he picked the puck up and walked right to the net, faking out two Kings players for a clear shot on goal. The puck hit the post/cross bar join and went wide. Seeing it, one’s thought was, “Gee, the space opened up so fast,” when it should probably have been, “Gee, he knows ahead of time where space is going to open up.” That’s the brilliance of a player like this. You just wonder why he doesn’t make it happen more often.
To Bedard’s credit, he did come up with a crucial shootout goal. His approach was fast in, then stop up hard enough to throw snow from his skates. He must have spotted something, because he pushed a shot straight ahead of himself, flat on the ice, and under goalie Darcy Kuemper. It was hard to tell what he saw, but likely Kuemper was looking for something off the ice and so lifted the paddle of his stick. A smart goal, if not a brilliant one.
My guess going into this experiment was that Bedard would bear down harder than Zegras. Be more dominating. Do less showing off. So far, all is not as predicted. We’ll see what happens Sunday down the road in Anaheim.
