Armchair Hockey Scout

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2025-26 edition Ask a direct question about this edition of the book — who, how many, how common, which group more — and it is answered with a table computed on this page from the edition’s index: the season line, height and age, the on-ice percentiles, the grades and the traits read out of every report. Ask for a view on named players — what a comparison comes down to, what makes a man — and you get the book’s reading of their own pages, and only those. The model turns your question into a query and phrases the result, or reads the pages it is handed; it never originates a figure, and an answer carrying a figure that is on neither the table nor the pages is withheld. It does not forecast, and it says so when a question is outside what the book holds.

Tables are computed on this page from the 2025-26 edition’s index; readings rest on the players’ own pages; the model never counts. Twenty questions an hour.

This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

98

Connor Bedard

Chicago Blackhawks Center

67 points at 19, a minus-36, and a 41.1 per cent chance share that is the 3rd percentile in the league.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2023-24CHI68223961-442840220610.719:47
2024-25CHI82234467-3670110519511.820:17
2025-26 so far—————————————
Career—1504583128-8098150740111.220:03

This Season So Far

The 2025-26 season has not started. The empty row above is his, and both it and this paragraph fill in on their own from the morning after he first plays: what he has done, what it is worth against his own last season, and the run he is on when the two disagree.

Last Season

23 goals and 44 assists in 82 games for 67 points, minus-36, on 20:17 a night and 195 shots, with 11 on the power play.

41.8 per cent at five-on-five, the 7th percentile among all skaters in the league. His on-ice goals were 48-64 against an expected 44-62. The chances were terrible and the goals matched them, and on a club that was 32nd in both shot-attempt share and chance share it is genuinely difficult to know how much of it is him.

The Finesse Game

The shot is already among the best in the league. The release is exceptionally quick, it comes off in stride, and he changes the angle late — 23 goals on 195 attempts at 11.8 per cent is a low return for a shooter this good and reflects the quality of what surrounded him.

The passing has become the larger half. 44 assists on a club that scored 226 goals is a real total and it comes from him holding the puck under pressure and finding a man late. A quarter of his shots come from inside 20 feet, which for a 5-10 centre being defended by every club’s best pair is a reasonable share.

The Physical Game

5-10 and 190, and thicker than he looks. He is not easily knocked off the puck and he goes to the interior more than a player of his size and value should have to.

70 penalty minutes at 19 is a strikingly high total and it reads as frustration on a team that lost 57 games. That is worth watching rather than worrying about.

The Intangibles

The 1st overall pick, two NHL seasons, and 128 points on the worst team in the Western Conference. He has never publicly complained about any of it.

The honest reading is that nothing has been learned yet about how good he is. A 3rd-percentile chance share is a genuine warning and it belongs to a 19-year-old playing the hardest minutes on a roster that finished last in the league in creating chances. The club’s obligation is to put somebody beside him before that number becomes a habit.

What kind of player

The searchable half of the report. The first group is computed from the season's own data; the rest are read out of the prose above, and each one carries the sentence that produced it. A subject the report never raised is simply absent.

  • measuredcomputed here from the season's own data
  • a strengthread out of the prose, and claimed

Each computed tag also says how well its measure holds up from one season to the next, because a tag describes a season that has finished and a reader will assume it predicts the one coming. Some do and some do not, and the gap is wide: five-on-five workload repeats well, scoring late does not repeat at all.

  • durable· was available

    82 of 82 games

    Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it

  • workhorse· carries the load at even strength

    15:38 a game at five-on-five, 98th percentile among forwards

    Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.78) · 58% keep it

  • playmakera strength· passes up the shot a scorer takes

    “The passing has become the larger half. 44 assists on a club that scored 226 goals is a real total and it comes from him holding the puck under pressure and finding a man late.”

  • hard-to-movea strength· cannot be shifted from where he decides to stand

    “He is not easily knocked off the puck and he goes to the interior more than a player of his size and value should have to.”

  • retaliatesa strength· answers the cross-check, and takes the second penalty

    “70 penalty minutes at 19 is a strikingly high total and it reads as frustration on a team that lost 57 games.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,282 minutes

Expected goals
41.8%
7th pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
42.7%
5th pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 48 for, 64 against. Expected: 44.5 and 62.0.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
91st
Numbers
7th

The report ranks him 84 points above where the numbers do. It was written for a back edition, with the seasons that followed already known. Neither the agreement nor the gap says anything about the eye, and this report is excluded from the club-level comparison for the same reason. Why the numbers land there sets out the club he did it on, the minutes he played and the men he played them with.

Both bars are percentiles among the 637 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 81 on their own scale — against every other report's mean. The numbers bar ranks his share of expected goals. A gap is a disagreement about where he belongs, not two scales talking past each other.

Tracked

NHL Edge, 2024-25 · 82 games

Top speed
21.4 mph
18th pct

fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 22.2

Bursts over 20 mph
0.85 a game

how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes

Distance
3.47 miles a game

skated, all strengths

Hardest shot
83.1 mph
33rd pct

one shot; the league's average best is 83.9

A top speed is a season's best, and a man who takes more shifts gets more tries at one; the percentile is the feed's own, against every skater, and says less between a top-pair defenceman and a fourth-line wing than it does between two men in the same job. The counts are shown per game for the same reason.

Usual linemates

2024-25 · 1282 minutes at five-on-five

Share of his five-on-five ice time spent alongside each player, measured from shift charts. Special teams are excluded: a power-play unit is not a line.

Why the numbers land there

Five-on-five, 2024-25

The club
CHI took 43.2% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 41.8% — 1.4 below the club he did it on.
The role
First line, 1,282 minutes at five-on-five — 90th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Alex Vlasic41.6%41.9%43.2%
Ryan Donato43.7%40.9%47.6%
Tyler Bertuzzi39.5%42.7%41.9%

41.6% together, 41.9% for him apart and 43.2% for Vlasic apart. Splitting them up moved neither man. Whatever is driving the share, it is not this pairing.

Expected-goal share while both were on the ice, and for each man in the minutes he played without the other. Apart is the pair subtracted from his own totals. It does not settle who was carrying whom — apart from each other, both were still playing with somebody — but it does say whether the share travelled when the pairing broke up.

Where he shoots from

goal on goal missed

291 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 25 of them goals. His median goal came from 32 feet. 24% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 19% from beyond forty.