I've been playing around with some of my NHLe figures and I decided to take part in a little experiment based on a clickbait video thumbnail I saw on YouTube:
Is Connor Bedard a better prospect than McDavid?
I haven't watched it yet as I wanted to form my own opinion on the matter first.
McDavid's NHLe progression over his junior career is nothing short of ridiculous and had he been NHL-draft eligible as a 16 year-old, he would have posted the seventh-highest NHLe in the draft (based on quick math, didn't check the late rounds) and arguably goes as the third- or fourth-overall pick of that class (cannot understate how monstrous a season Drouin had in 2012-13). McDavid unequivocally goes first overall in 2014 based on his production as well, but the gap between him and Draisaitl is far smaller than one would think (about 4.5 points). For reference, his NHLe's are as follows:
McDavid D-2 NHLe: 24.741pts
McDavid D-1 NHLe: 41.750pts
McDavid D-0 NHLe: 60.296pts
Bedard started his junior career on actual fire, but it's important to consider that the WHL's "bubble" half-season meant that the Regina Pats missed out on a lot of quality competition. In the formula for NHLe, given as NHLe = (P/GP junior)*(82 NHL GP)*2*(
NHLe Factor), I've applied a correction by removing the doubling multiplier typically added to junior leagues. A slightly arbitrary decision but the end result seems satisfactory enough to approximate what a proper WHL season would have resulted in. His resultant D-2 and D-1 NHLe's are as follows:
Bedard D-2 NHLe: 21.889pts
Bedard D-1 NHLe: 37.889pts
The transition between D-2 and D-1 seasons
favours Bedard's year-over-year growth to McDavid's if only ever so slightly. This bodes well for Bedard having the potential to eclipse MCDavid as a better prospect: developmentally, he's a hair ahead of what McDavid did in Erie prior to his draft season despite his NHLe falling short of the McDavid benchmark. There's also the matter of the relative strength of the Regina Pats to consider: they have been a very, very poorly run WHL team since winning the Bedard draft lottery and have failed to build a contending team around Bedard. In order to
match McDavid's year-over-year growth into his draft season, he would need to play at a
149-point pace (2.328P/GP).
For context, no 18 year-old player in the modern WHL (since the 2006 NHL lockout) has scored equal to or more than 130 points since Sam Steel in 2016-17 (131 points). No 18 year-old has hit or crossed the 140-point mark since Daymond Langkow in the 1994-95 season. No modern WHL player has breached 140 points. Furthermore, the only modern WHL players to post a P/GP above 2.000 were Aleksi Heponiemi (2.070P/GP, 2017-18), Oliver Bjorkstrand (2.000P/GP, 2014-15), and Sven Baertschi (2.000P/GP, 2011-12). Bedard's task is to eclipse these benchmarks
as a seventeen year-old.
I'm currently projecting his draft-year NHLe to be 55.943 points, which translates to 152.668 points over 64 WHL games (2.385P/GP) assuming his year-over-year growth rate is consistent to McDavid's. As it stands, Bedard is
currently projecting to be the best prospect since Connor McDavid but likely falls short of eclipsing #97. Whether or not he meets the projection is an entirely different question, but boys and girls lordy do we have ourselves one hell of an NHL talent in the WHL right now.
EDIT: for a little bit more context for how good Bedard could be, Matthews' draft-year NHLe was 48.093 points.