The 2023-2024 NHL regular season is almost over. Most teams got around 10 games left before the season is over, or the playoff begins. With the season mostly written, it’s also time look at the players and who have shined and who has disappointed. Going into the season the most exciting players entering the league was the generational talent Connor Bedard. The hype was real and in no time, he showed that he was just as good as advertised. Bedard has been awesome, and is most likely going to win the Calder. However, the Calder is awarded to the best overall rookie of the season, and this season that hasn’t been Bedard. That honour instead falls to Brock Faber.
The Lacking Impact of Bedard’s Offence
Before the season everyone expected Bedard to run away with the Calder. He was going to play a big role for the Blackhawks. A team desperately looking for their new superstar after the departure from Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews. He wasn’t going to get a lot of help, but hopes were that the Blackhawks with Bedard would show signs of hope and life. Bedard has done well this season and his offensive impact is irreplaceable on the poor Blackhawks roster. In fact, we saw when he missed 14 games with a broken jaw. During this stretch the Blackhawks couldn’t score.
However, despite his offensive impact and his 55 points in 57 games, the overall effectiveness and impact of Bedard has been missing. This makes Connor Bedard winning the Calder tricky. While he has been able to put up points, its rarely resulted in wins and its rarely felt like his strong offence has been the difference or game changer. Although, it has happened before like in his phenomenal five-point game against the Ducks earlier this month.
While that game shows the impact Bedard can have on the outcome of games, it’s been a rarity. Most of the time his points either comes too late in the game, or in situations where it doesn’t end up leading to anything. During 5 on 5 play when the game is tied, Bedard has put up ten points. While that isn’t bad, it does highlight how he hasn’t been able to get the Hawks over the line often this season. This is mostly down to the players around him, Bedard has also been unable to make the team better than they were last season.
Effectiveness in All Zones
One reason Connor Bedard shouldn’t win the Calder comes from zone effectiveness. He has been pure offence this season, and it has been costly for his defensive stats. Furthermore, his Corsi For during 5 on 5 and even strength is abysmal. Corsi is the stat which measures the shot differential during even strength, which includes shot on net, missed shots and blocked chances. Here Bedard’s CF% is only 43.7 during 5 on 5 play. It only goes marginally up to 44.8% during all even strength play. Meaning the Blackhawks will face more chances when Bedard is on the ice than they will create. Similarly, the expected goals against vs. goals for with Bedard this season during 5 on 5 isn’t great. Bedard only gets a 43.72 meaning he can be expected to be on the ice for more goals against than for.
Comparing this to Bedard main rival for the Calder Trophy, Brock Faber, and a picture starts to form. Faber has been a revolution on the backend of the Wild and over the course of the season Faber has been the Wilds best player. Faber’s CF% is at 48.41 during 5 on 5 play and his xGF% is 51.26. This means that when Faber is on the ice for the Wild, they can expect to score more goals than concede.
Faber also has 40 points in 71 games, which is an astonishing number considering his strength is in the defensive aspects of hockey. Something that can be seen in his defensive stats, like blocked shots where he has 134, including 57 during close games. This shows just how vital Faber has to the Wild when the game is on the line. Comparing this stat with Bedard, the future superstar only has 22 blocks all season and 13 during close games.
The True Value of Faber
What makes Faber’s season even more impressive is how he has been able to handle things. Before the season he wasn’t expected to be the number one defenceman, nor be in the Calder conversation. Expectation was that Faber could be a solid defensive player on the second pair, but as the season went on, he has been able to steady an extremely injured Wild defence almost singlehandedly. It’s been a herculean performance that has keep the Wild in the playoff hunt.
Especially since early in the season it became clear that Wild captain, Jared Spurgeon was out for the season. A heavy blow was with multiple injuries to Jonas Brodin, leaving him out for a significant time this season. In other words, Faber was suddenly the number one defenceman on a team that was struggling to fill in all six defensive spots. Somehow, he not only survived, but thrived in this role
During a stretch in December, he had to log on one ironman game after the next. Starting from the 14th of December to 27th of December, Faber played seven games where he on average was on the ice for more than 29 and a half minutes. Four of which was with over 30 minutes of ice time. Oh, and the Wild won six out the seven games.
This stretch truly showcases just how just how effective and all-round astonishing Faber has been this season. Especially when it comes to just eating minutes. Over the course of the season, he played more than 25 minutes per game. A lot of those minutes comes at key moments of games, where he is needs to either find a goal with his strong passing and vision offensively, or to protect the lead with blocks, and incredible defensive awareness.
Who Gets the Calder?
With the two players season compared along with their underlying numbers, the question becomes who should win the Calder. In many ways both Connor Bedard and Brock Faber has done more than enough to win the Calder. However they have done so in extremely different ways. Bedard’s elite offence on a team that consist of fringe NHLers is remarkable, even with his defensive struggles. On the other hand, Brock Faber has played one of the best defensive rookie seasons in recent memory, but lack the offensive x-factor of Bedard. The two are hard to compare, and it’s a shame the NHL doesn’t has a similar award system to the NFL, where there is an award for both best offensive and defensive rookie.
Now with that said, the NHL describes the Calder Trophy in the following way: “The Calder Memorial Trophy is an annual award given to the player selected as the most proficient in his first year of competition in the National Hockey League.”. A vague description for sure, but it should go to the best overall rookie of that season.
While Bedard is the most skilled rookie this season, Faber’s ability to play big minutes per game, while keeping incredibly strong underlying stats in terms of corsi, blocks and points makes him the best preforming rookie this season. It’s not about who will be better in the future, because thats no doubt going to be Bedard. However this season, Faber’s maturity and 200-foot game has been more vital to the Wild than the offence of Bedard. For that reason, Faber should win the Calder, even though the likely winner is Connor Bedard.
Main Photo: Robert Edwards-USA TODAY Sports
