Analytics: How good was Connor Bedard?
Using "Goals Created" to value Bedard's point production.
Alright, so I’m going to take a stab at something dangerous. Math.
Normally, I hate saying “this is just for fun” because it seems like a free pass for saying dumb things.
But… this is just for fun.
As a personal project, I am going to have a few posts where I apply some of the analytics discussed in Rob Vollman’s books, Stat Shot: A Fan’s Guide to Hockey Analytics and Stat Shot: The Ultimate Guide to Hockey Analytics. If you’re interested at all in hockey analytics, I highly recommend giving his books a read. And I say that as someone who hates math.
These “analytics” posts will try to answer some questions regarding the Blackhawks. I won’t be sharing these on my Twitter, so you can only find them here. That’s because I recognize that statistics aren’t perfect and some random guy on the internet (me) isn’t going to uncover anything groundbreaking.
For example, this post looks to answer “How good was Connor Bedard?” It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to observe that the answer is “very good.”
But I’m interested in the numbers. And today, that number is “Goals Created.”
Goals Created
Goals Created (GC) is a statistic discussed in Vollman’s book which is meant to replace points as a better way to evaluate a players contribution to scoring.
What is meant by that?
When identifying an individual players contribution to a team, the stat most commonly used is “points,” a combination of goals and assists.
Goals are easy to understand. To win a hockey game you must score a goal. That goal happened, or it didn’t (2004 Flames fans may disagree). Assists, on the other hand, can be a bit more complicated. While there is one goal scorer, there can be multiple players (or none) with an assist on that same goal. An assist can also be the result of a pass, incidental contact, a shot attempt, etc. Or, someone can directly create a play and not be awarded an assist at all.
GC attempts to place a point value for goals and assists. If GC = 1, goals are given the value of .5, since goals are kinda important they get a half-value. Assists are calculated by taking the average number of assists per goal in a given season and then dividing the remaining .5 points by that number. In the 2023 season, there were, on average, 1.69 assists per goal. That makes each assist worth .295 (.5 divided by 1.69).
That’s Goals Created in a nut shell.
How much did Bedard contribute to the Blackhawks?
GC = (goals x .5) + (assists x .295)
One of the most impressive things about Bedard’s rookie season wasn’t just the fact that he displayed elite offensive skill as an 18-year-old in the NHL. It’s the fact that despite being on a historically bad Blackhawks team, Bedard was still able to put up the stats that he did.
Bedard put up 22 goals, 39 assists, and 61 points in 68 games. Impressive for a rookie, regardless. Leaguewide, this ranks 87 overall on NHL.com. Let’s figure out what his GC was.
Multiply 22 goals by .5 and you get 11. Multiply 39 assists by .295 and you get 11.505. Combine the two to get Bedard’s GC of 22.505, which rounds up to 23.
With GC, if you add up a teams total GC, you get the number of goals scored by that team. We all know the Hawks didn’t score a whole lot of goals, so let’s see how many goals Bedard impacted compared to the rest of the Hawks.
The Hawks had a total of 178 goals scored last season, which is ranked dead last. Without rounding the GC’s to the nearest number, the total adds up to 178.3 goals created.
Let’s round the numbers to make things a bit more simple and find out what percentage of the Blackhawks’ goals were created by Bedard. Which is 13%, by the way (23 divided by 178).
So Connor Bedard created 13% of the Blackhawks’ goals last season. That’s cool and all, but how does that compare to the leagues top scorers?
Compared to the NHL
Leaguewide, at first glance, the numbers don’t look impressive. As I said before, Bedard ranks 87 overall for the NHL’s top scorers last season.
Ranking the NHL’s top 100 by GC, things look the same as Bedard ranks 88 with his 23 GC.
Let’s see how Bedard compares when we look at the percentage of goals scored from each players team.
Bedard ranks 16 out of 100 with creating 13% of the Blackhawks goals.
Now, as an 18-year-old, that’s damn impressive.
Again, this isn’t perfect and I really don’t think that this does anything other than make you go, “huh, that’s cool.” (At least, for me it does).
Not all teams are created equal. The data is skewed by the likes of being on a good team and playing against a bad team or vice-versa. And not every position is going to offer the same scoring opportunities.
And then there’s the obvious, Bedard’s teammates were subpar. A players team is a very important factor in how many goals they score. And let’s not foget that he missed 14 games due to an injury.
Final Thoughts
Starting with the question “How good was Connor Bedard?” we took a look at how Bedard impacted scoring on his team. We used Goals Created to place a value on each of Bedard’s goals and assists, which came out to 23. Then, we took a look at how Bedard compared to the rest of his team, which he had the largest share of the total goals scored by the Hawks at 13%. Finally, we compared Bedard’s share with the NHL’s top-100 scorers, where Bedard ranked no. 16.
So, in conclusion, I can say that Bedard was indeed a good player.
Sources:
Stat Shot: A Fan’s Guide to Hockey Analytics, Rob Vollman
Stat Shot: The Ultimate Guide to Hockey Analytics, Rob Vollman
NHL.com
Natural Stattrick
Statmuse