NHL: Anyone following Connor Bedard's rookie season?
TheGoonies1985
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He has 3 points in 4 games and playing tonight vs Colorado.
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if Connor is on I'll check 'em out; unless there is football on the set...
He is very young just turned 18 years old he has a few years to adjust to the NHL so fr he is doing OK.
I follow the Habs, so I got to watch him in what I believe was his 3rd game. That game was nothing in particular for him to write home about. I believe he had one assist that night, Is he from Montreal? Seemed like Habs fans had some extra hate for a rook in just his 3rd career game.
Montreal tends to be bitter bet you they wanted him. I say this as a Habs fan myself. The greatest team in NHL history has not won a Cup in 30 years it is sad.
I focus on my team, the Wild. I try to pay attention to who the great players are.
I wish him luck except when he plays the Wild 😜
Bedard should be a big star. Generational talent.
As my avatar shows, I'm a Detroit guy. 4 games in and they FINALLY feel like they've turned a corner. Alex DeBrincat is leading the league in scoring with 8 points. It's been great.
Hopefully I always loved watching Detroit play!!! Same could be said about the Detroit Lions in the NFL seems like Detroit is becoming a shinning light in sports again.
Agree about Detroit. Looking good but so does Philly. Too soon still.
Bedard will be no Mario, not even close, but perhaps a McDavid, but not sure about that either.
I thought I saw something the other day saying that Connor Bedard was leading all rookies in points.
Go to NHL.com
all games and stats listed. They have a point total for just rookies
https://www.nhl.com/
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He is doing pretty well so far point wise for a guy that just turned 18 not long ago. I hope he has a great career makes hockey more fun to watch.
kid Connor is on GN sports almost every night...
Hey Hockey guys…
has Connor appeared on a Blaster box yet???
He’s leading with 13 so far.
Luke Hughes a rookie defenseman with NJ has 10 points.
Both impressive so far.
So far for a young player Bedard seems to been doing well. His team not so much.
He's doing well!
Of course the number 1 overall pick usually goes to the worst team.
Marco Rossi is playing well for the Wild, along with defenseman Brock Faber.
Our team not doing well either 😕.
I am looking forward to some great games in the next few years between the Wild and the Blackhawks!
You have a journeyman defenseman named Dakota Mermis. His mom work for our company. She is so proud of him.
It must be a thrill just to play in the NHL!
Marco Rossi looked to be the better rookie today.
GO WILD!
Broken jaw he is out. He seems fragile at 5 ft 10 and 185 lbs compared to the size of some of these NHL players.
I hope I am wrong and he has a great NHL career but for some reason I keep thinking this guy is going to get injured over and over again.
McDavid is 6 ft 1 and 197 lbs as a comparison.
Eh, hard to say a guy is fragile because of a broken jaw.
Yeah hopefully I am wrong but that was not a big hit and the more he plays the more they are going to go after him.
Pat Kane, Marchand, Gaudreau, DeBrincat, Jesper Bratt, Quinn Hughes....Those would be guys who've played 5 or more years in the league, at present, at Bedard's size (or smaller) without really being injured (at least from a hit). He was stooped down and caught a shoulder from the second most useless player in the NHL and then lost a fight because he can't even manage to do that right.
The McJesus comparison seems null considering McJesus is usually only in a one on one situation since he would've blown his defensive assignment in order to blow the d-zone early to cherry pick - so there's less of a chance that he's going to be winding through traffic like Bedard was.
Wrong thread, this is about CMcD and the Oilers............> @lanemyer85 said:
Oh Hello,
You obviously don't watch Olier games, you be funny, LOL.
BTW, how is that Kaprisov dude doing? Last year there was a poster here who decreed him the Russian Savior for Minnie ha ha. Oh, 60th in scoring this year? Ha ha ha.
McDavid (not Jesus) after being injured at the beginning of the season, is tied for 8th in scoring 'tho' he has played less games than everyone 'bove him, one point from being tied for 5th. And last nite, I saw him check a guy out against the boards that took said other team guy out of the play. LOFL that he 'blows his defensive assignment'. Folks must be watching someone else than the smooth flow of the Oil........................
And of course McD had a solo goal that dropped the pants off the Red Wings Goalie, with speed, skating, and generational ability of puck handling, he made it look easy. Huh.
See it here, amen:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ZFhkwDYNWUA
Yup, Dee troit goalie did not know what happened, that is what a generational player does, McD, top 5 all time.
Auston Matthews - 2nd in puck battles won. McJesus - 167th. How does someone who is around the puck that much not win the puck....and why is the answer because he's blowing the d-zone early all the time and avoiding body contact at most costs? Since you watch all the Oil games and all....
P.S. MacKinnon outscored McJesus in the 2023 calendar year, and plays close to average defense, unlike someone else who is around the 27th percentile in his own end. Where's the MacKinnon thread of worship....and why is the answer because he doesn't play for a Canadian team?
you do understand that he's at worst, a top 5 forward in the NHL, right?
and in fairness, you're also the guy who said Skinner sucked, even though he was above average last year on a team that played no defense, and had a defensively incompetent coach.
23-24 Skinner
under Jay Woodong - 3.53 GAA, .861 SV%
under Chuck Knoblauch's backwoods Canadian cousin - 2.30 GAA, .917 SV%, 2 shutouts
Lanemyer85:
Enough with the McJesus no one believes he is Jesus in any way shape or form. We just like watching him play hockey. At our age most of us that use our brains do not worship false idols. We just have hobbies to pass time like watching hockey. I worship no humans not a single one but I can enjoy the talent they have.
it's not just because of the fanboys, but that's a part of it, particularly the adult aged fanboys which is as cringeworthy as Chris Matthews' Obama-worship.
Since you appear to be a coin guy, I'm going to assume you're old enough to remember how a large swath of the collective Canadian hockey media did all they could to run non-Canadians like Sundin (even though he was the best player in team history), Kessel, Marty Havlat in Ottawa etc out of town. You know, because they didn't care, they were lazy, didn't play through injuries, didn't fight, Sundin didn't want to be traded, or they went to college so they didn't become boy-labor in Canadian Juniors etc. Anyone who watched Havlat in Chicago knows his shoulders were jello by the time he got there from all the wear he accrued in Ottawa. Yet he was deemed fragile and didn't care about the team.
Guys like Kessel in particular were roasted because of his defensive shortcomings - and was deemed "out of shape" even though he would routinely beat guys like Seguin end to end and was going through cancer treatments over some of that span. Yet, you never hear anything about McJesus' shortcomings and often flat out lack of effort in his own end. So until I hear one of the select few reputable writers/on-air guys that I at least respect a little like like Friedman, LeBrun, Justin Bourne, or Mike Kelly bag on him once he'll continue to be McJesus. Deal with it.. I'm not talking about the hacks like Steve Simmons in Toronto either. I expect that stuff from him, but even the respectable guys almost seem like they're afraid to criticize him about anything lest they endure the wrath of the fanboys/girls on social media.
Believe me when I say I worship NO human not a single one.
I am worried that Kaprizov will be gooned out of the league very soon. The new "instigator" penalty actually encourages goons to go after the top players in an attempt to injure them. I don't know why the NHL doesn't want to put the best product on the ice, but they don't.
Apparently it's acceptable to cross check him multiple times until you break his ribs and the league does nothing, even though they said they were going to start calling it more often. He was also savagely cross checked more than once in the playoffs by a washed up puke called Ryan Suter. No call there either.
I will always respond to posters like @lanemyer85, whom I have the highest respect for. However I don't respond to those who have zero knowledge of the great sport of hockey.
I believe we covered that last year. Playoffs are a different animal when it comes to calls. Refs don't want to or are instructed to not have a hand in game outcomes (whichever you believe to be true). Historically through the cap era, powerplay opps are roughly cut in half compared to the regular season and it's obvious that they want to call matching minors as much as possible when it comes to roughing type calls.
I mean it goes both ways. Dumba smoked Pavelski, a star level player, with a much dirtier hit than those Suter crosschecks and didn't receive a minor. I'm sure if you attended a high school game in Eden Prairie or Bemidji on Friday night, you'd probably see something similar to what Suter pulled off. By that I mean, not that big of an infraction. I remember Chelios cracking Patrick Kane with 6 to 8 hard crosschecks to the back on the boards behind the Wings' goal one night that garnered nothing. ..well it garnered more hatred for Chelios among Hawks fans that didn't start to dissipate until two or three years ago. And anyone who's ever watched Chara pre-crackdown, hundreds of crosschecks into the back of the heads & necks of players over the years, let alone the thousands to other extremities.
In the AZ vs Cal-Gary game tonight there was a much worse example of this
by rookie Michael Kesselring, and the pathetic part is this stemmed from the Calgary player being shoved into the AZ goalie by Kesselring himself. So in turn, he of course crosschecks him to the ice, and then gives him a shot to the head once he was down. He got a double minor for that, a crosscheck and a roughing penalty. In the playoffs, he'd either get nothing, or one of those penalties and only if a Calgary player didn't retaliate otherwise it would be a matching roughing call.
I don't think there's anything new in top players being targeted or hit or slashed or whatnot. I mean it's certainly not as dirty as it was even 10 years ago when stuff like this
occurred fairly often. That's the hit that truly kicked off the repeat offender suspensions, quickly followed up by multiple Matt Cooke offenses. That schmuck got 25 games for that leaping headshot. Pat Kane took a pretty good hit the other night and left the game, but I've watched 95% of every game he's ever played and he's only taken 2 decently hard hits in his career. Didn't turn out so well for the 2 perps either...
but I think if I were to say to even any other hardcore hockey fans here, who is the biggest rat in the NHL right now? I don't think anyone could come up with one obvious guy. Can't really be Marchand since it's been a few years since he's done something Marchand-grade stupid.
Mostly it's just 4th liners like Liam O'Brien or the Michael Pezzetta types who can skate a bit and do the guided missile/heavy forechecking hits (and boarding infractions) who rile up certain players....and by certain players, I mean the big, slow, no puck-skill, generally useless defensemen like Brendan Smith (the guy who took out Bedard) or Erik Gudbranson because, well what else can they do other than get in the way of pucks to block shots, clear a crease or punch people? Pretty much nothing. And since there are very few goon type forwards outside of Reaves, Ross Johnston, Maroon is pretty much just a goon at this point too), this is what's left.
Really what they should be working on is the consistency in boarding calls. It never ceases to amaze me that more guys aren't seriously injured. I witnessed two tonight where guys were driven head first into the glass from behind. One was a 5 and a match, the other nothing.
well if you're Canadian you may want to rethink that stance regardless of which party you support. I don't know anything about this guy and don't support any one party in my homeland so I don't care what this guy's party affiliation is, but as someone who minored in journalism, his complete slag-off of a hack gotcha j-school grad from some pizza-delivery university is potentially worthy of idolization.
(in no way trying to turn the thread political, just appreciate the high comedy).
To bring it back to hockey, Mike Johnson is turning into the best analyst in hockey, so anyone can feel free to worship away....
Bedard out at least another 6 weeks the NHL website says.
Marchand was suspended for 6 games less than 2 years ago. He holds the all-time record for number of suspensions. He's ALWAYS in the conversation for biggest rat. Gutless player who has gotten away with a billion things that somehow didn't get him suspended and never answers the bell for any of it.
Maybe Ryan Hartman - suspension for slew footing Alex DeBrincat and then an intentional high stick on a faceoff in retaliation for the crosschecks on Kaprizov even though the guy he high sticked had nothing to do with it.
Or Jamie Benn, who intentionally crosschecks guys on faceoffs and put Dylan Larkin in a halo a few years back doing it.
The Bedard hit was 100% clean though.
I agree on this . Players also don't protect themselves nearly enough - I constantly see guys turning the backs to the play where you never saw that 25 years ago. And then they get run through the boards, which isn't penalized nearly severely enough.
I just watched the Dumba hit on Pavelski for about the 20th time, and still don't understand why it's bring called dirty. Pavelski had just passed the puck and Dumba hit him shoulder on shoulder. The injury was caused when Pavelski's head hit the ice, he wasn't driven into the boards.
The Suter cross checks on Kaprizov were very hard and aimed at his side where there's little or no padding and the puck was not in the area. Was it the first (or worst) time this happened? Of course not.
The difference in these two examples is that one guy had just made a play with the puck and the other guy was nowhere near it.
Hartman is at times a dirty player, BUT I don't see him targeting star players, usually he's going after someone because the opponent has taken liberties with one of our top guys.
I realize hockey is a "tough guy" sport and there's going to be some hard hits.
My complaint is about the cement heads going after the top players in an attempt to injure them. Especially when they don't even have the puck.
Let the goons fight each other, but I want to see talented players, not a bunch of giant bums crushing everyone in sight.
Guys like Marchant need to be suspended for MUCH longer periods of time. He is one who should be banned from playing in my opinion.
The NHL should be punishing the players who start these problems and not the guys who stick up for their team mates. It's only made worse when the refs "swallow their whistle" on the original hit.
I did not write this.
It was late - too late to be legal - and head contact. Decent amount shoulder but Dumba rose up through the hit and made head contact.
I just watched it 3 more times and don't see the outrage. In fact Dumba was knocked flying into the boards and his helmet was nearly knocked off, so he took a big hit in giving one.
When your skating backwards, like Dumba was, your rear end is low and knees are bent, so yes he hit him with an upward motion, he had to in order to hit Joe's shoulder with his own.
Where does it say anywhere you can't body check with an upward motion? I don't buy that argument, unless there's a rule against it I haven't heard of.
Your too late to be legal argument, may have some merit, is just too hard to determine, guys get hit all the time after they get rid of the puck. Was this too late? Maybe. I don't see it as being any later than usual.
The injury didn't happen because of the hit, but because of Pavelski's head hitting the ice. Dumba certainly couldn't have planned that.
I saw it (and still see it) as a clean, but extremely hard hit, no charging, no boarding, no later than is allowed, and everyone is upset that Joe got injured, so it HAD to be a dirty hit.
No one wants to see another player hurt, well, I don't anyway.
The first words out of the referee's mouth was that after review, there was no major penalty on the play. Dumba got a roughing penalty. Not even sure if that was because of the hit or the activities after the hit.
My complaint is when goons are targeting superstar players when they don't evdn have the puck.
The NHL has said it was going to start calling cross checking more often, and they have failed when you see a guy get cross checked MULTIPLE times in the side (where there's little or no padding) when the puck is not in the area. That's an attempt to injure, there's no excuse for it.
Nowhere. But you can't hit upward if you end up in the head area, which is exactly what happened here.
Doesn't really matter if Dumba planned it or not.
And, OF COURSE, the injury happened because of the hit. Without the hit, Pavelski's head doesn't hit the ice. That's like saying Kris Draper wasn't injured by Claude Lemieux hitting him from behind but by his face hitting the boards. C'mon.
After Pavelski released the puck, Dumba skated about 5 feet further backward, then hit sideways and upward into Pavelski to make contact, leaving his feet in the process of doing so. Leaving your feet to deliver a hit is pretty much always charging.
It was a bad hit.
He did not leave his feet.
He hit him shoulder to shoulder. Upward motion isn't an issue. He did not intentionally try to injure.
This is absolutely nothing like hitting a guy from behind and his head hits the boards.
Roughing penalty at worst. Had Joe not landed on his head, play would have just continued.
And it does matter if he planned it or not, that's what would have made it a "dirty" hit.
Matt Cooke's hit on McKinnon a few years ago was a dirty hit. Dumba's was just playoff hockey.
Yes, he did.
Didn't say he did intentionally try to injure. But he did make head contact. Which is illegal.
Late hits that include head contact are dirty.
Disagree. It's hardly the most egregious hit ever but it was still dirty.
Didn't hit him in the head, didn't leave his feet.
I am moving on, it's been proven.
You're right, the tip of one toe stayed down, lol.
😂
you're proving my point. It isn't one obvious guy now. Marchand may have the most suspensions but that's only because they didn't bother with those in the days when league rules were fleshed out on bar napkins in Toronto. Previous eras were a lot more obvious. Like Ken Linseman in the 80's, probably Claude, Ulf, or Marchment in the 90's/early 2000's, then the Sean Avery/Matt Cooke era. But back then you also had the hybrid rat/goons like Domi, Darcy Tucker, Gino Odjick etc. Tom Wilson is the only guy that would fit that description now and he's been either hurt or has finally calmed his dumb 8th-grade-educated-diarrhea-geyser-brain down over the last few years too.
The stuff Marchand typically does isn't anything compared to what Scott Stevens did, and only Paul Kariya fans call him a rat. As big of a POS as Marchand is, no one had to hibernate in darkened rooms like an Italian widow for years from a Marchand hit. Jamie Benn hasn't done anything that guys like Shane Doan (another of the Mr Elbows tribe) didn't do, and no one thinks of Shane Doan as a rat outside of a select few.
by the way the rule is written, it wasn't a dirty hit. By hockey code it was. We've been through this. He intentionally stooped down in order to drive high through the head area. It wasn't all shoulder to shoulder, and he did it to one of the cleanest players in the game. So, sorry, that's why I have no sympathy for the Suter crosschecks. The Suter crosschecks aren't taking Kirill out of a playoff game like the Dumba hit...and that type of hit wasn't his first. He'd been doing that type of stuff since the Evason hire.
Technically, even if they weren't going to call a check to the head, it was a pick and interference. So he should have at least received a double minor. He got nothing, because playoffs. You can call it clean, or whatever, but those are all predatory hits. It's a Tom Wilson type of hit. Ask Ľubomír Višňovský if he thinks that hit was clean....his career was ended on a similar targeted hit like that.
Frankly teams should be going after Kirill and Rossi and those guys if they feel the need to retaliate for something a Wild player did. Why take Maroon, Middleton or Duhaime off the ice when the Wild are a much poorer team when they're on the ice? If Duhaime boarded one of my teammates, I'm not going after him. He's garbage. I'll take a run at Kirill or Rossi. That's how you combat goonery. When that idiot has to hoof it back to the room after a dirty hit and Kirill is in there getting examined by the medics after being targeted, that type of stuff tends to stop.
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This line of thought sickens me to my core.
Great idea, intentionally hurt a guy who has nothing to do with a cheap shot BECAUSE he's the best player on the ice.
Last night against the Predators, Kaprizov was battling along the boards for the puck when a second Predator (appropriate name) came from behind Kirill and elbowed him in the back of the head. Wasn't interested in playing the puck, just trying to hurt another player. Then our goon Bogosian goes after the POS and they have a fight and Bogosian gets an extra penalty for being an "instigator". What a crock of $hit! The instigator was the guy who comes in and hits Kaprizov in the head. How about tossing him out of the game and maybe a 20 game suspension, THAT'S how you put and end to goonery.
I suppose it would have made more sense (in your opinion?) to try to end the career of the Predators best player, ........of course, why didn't I think of that.
From now on whenever anyone hits anyone too hard we just need to immediately attack the opposition's best player. Hopefully we can hurt him bad enough to at least knock him out of the game......better yet, maybe end his career. It will be extra satisfying if the guy we injure is a little guy.
Pretty soon all the good players careers will be over and we'll get to watch some REALLY good hockey.
I can't wait.
I didn't say anything about a dirty hit or injuring anyone. I meant you take a run at them meaning a hard clean hit. That's how I was coached...granted, different (mid to late 90's) era, but frankly, not enough coaches have had that mentality. Some goon takes a run at one of our guys, we took a run at their best players and all of that stuff tends to stop. All Kirill has to do is give one of the Wilds' ever growing roster of mouthbreathers a sideways glance and the Dumba/Hartman type hits will stop. Kirill is shifty anyway, he doesn't take many, and I don't remember any, big open ice hits. So I'm talking about pasting him on the boards. That's exactly what I'd do. Finish hard and clean through the chest when he's playing the puck or cycling.
^^I don't have any problems with a good hard check when the guy has the puck.
In the examples I am referring to, Kaprizov has been repeatedly cross checked in the ribs and elbowed in the back of the head.
I have not really seen the Wild's goons going after the other teams top players like this. Usually they go after the other teams goon and fight them later in the game. That seems rather stupid as well.
I have been waiting for years for the Wild to get a great player, and he's been intentionally injured twice in the last two years. The NFL is at least trying to protect the players, the NHL seems to want to eliminate them.
This new version of the instigator penalty encourages the goons to take cheap shots at guys like Kirill, they know that in addition to possibly knocking the oppositions best player out of the game, if someone comes to his assistance, your team gets a power play.
Idiotic.
the thing is the Wild weren't like that before Guerin and Evason. That can be seen in Marcus Foligno's game since those hires. He was always the retaliator, never the aggressor. That changed under them. Middleton was a meatball n San Jose, then they bring in Reaves last deadline then replace him with Maroon who can't do anything anymore other than punch people. Then you add in the little stuff, slashes and scrums, Hartman's act, formerly Dumba's act...and he didn't hunt those types of hits under the previous regimes either. So that stuff is obviously being coached, at least was coached under Evason. Maybe it's changing now.
Since Guerin is building the Minnesota Bruins of 2009, I look at it in the same way players went after the Marc Savards (your old friend Matt Cooke ended his career)...and that was after someone...I think Andrew Ference took at run at Crosby. So Cooke didn't go after a 3rd pair defenseman....he took out then Bruins' 1st line center. Nathan Horton who granted was a physical power forward, but with all that was going on in the Cup final with Vancouver, he was taken out on a late hit by a former teammate. Although he came back the following season for a little while, he was effectively done after that hit....and I'm sure it wasn't just that hit, he was in his fair share of fights since junior and all that, but that's how it goes. You only have so many headshots before the doctors refuse to clear you. See Andrew Shaw in recent vintage.
After Lucic ran over Ryan Miller, a goalie 50 lbs ligher than him, the Sabres signed (6'8) John Scott. Lucic ducked him, Chara never went anywhere near anyone who could handle themselves, so Shawn Thornton had to step in and got absolutely brained. He came back for a bit but was effectively done after that fight. So what I'm saying is when you play that style, you get what you get, regardless if it's fair for others or not. And no Wild fan should want that given that Kirill only signed a 5 year deal, 3 left after this season...and we all know how much the Russian guys love moving to the sun states. You can play a "heavy" style without doing the old Bruins, current Wild agitating/goonish style. See the Kings run of early to mid 2010's. Maybe that's changing under Hynes...hope so for your sake, because Zuccarello is 36, and is essentially the only other Wild forward whom Kirill has had any real chemistry with. if the Wild don't develop a competent first line center, and/or they can't land one in free agency (Elias Pettersson should be the great Swede hope for a Wild fan), I don't know if I see Kirill staying around after 2026.