Connor Bedard is probably not used to this feeling.

Sure, every player has slumps, even great players like Alex Ovechkin, Patrick Kane, and Sidney Crosby have gone through stretches in their careers where they don’t score goals. Bedard currently has three goals in 16 games played. If you do a little math,(and who doesn’t love to do math while reading a sports article) that comes out to a 15-goal pace in 82 games.

Now, I don’t want to sound alarmist…. but if Connor Bedard finished the season with 15 goals, that would be an unmitigated disaster and a massive cause for concern.

I don’t want to mince words here, Bedard must score more goals.

There are many benefits to being as highly touted of a prospect as Connor Bedard is, however, one major detriment that comes with such star status is the pressure of expectations. Before the start of the season do you know what Blackhawks fans and pundits were debating?

Will Connor Bedard reach the 40-goal threshold this season? We just took it for granted that he would hit 30. Well, sorry to tell you, folks, he might finish right around the goal total he had last season (22) if something doesn’t change.

Now, there are reasons to feel that something will change. Firstly, Bedard has an absurdly low shooting percentage for a player of his caliber. He is shooting just under 6% so far this season. He shot 10% last season, and there is real reason to think that the number should regress to the mean.

Furthermore, Bedard is creating a lot of offense.

He shoots the puck more than any other player on the team, which means he has the puck more than any other player.

He creates rebounds, draws double teams, and generally drives the offense in a positive direction. He is still invaluable to this team, despite his struggle to score goals this season.

One area of the game that has me quite concerned is his faceoff percentage. Bedard is sitting at 30% on the year.

I hate to be so negative here because I love the kid, but that is unacceptable. It is also untenable. You cannot, I repeat cannot, have your first-line franchise center be completely inept at winning faceoffs.

We have seen Bedard recently working with Yanic Perreault on his faceoffs, and the hope is he can improve dramatically. The bummer is that even a dramatic improvement might still see Bedard being a really poor faceoff man.

I think that eventually the Hawks may need to try Bedard on the wing.

He can still drive the play, and carry the puck, something he excels at. However, the defensive burden or playing center, as well as the faceoffs can be left to another player more suited to those things.

Remember, Patrick Kane was a winger, and he still drove his line, it is very doable.

Add to that the fact that the Hawks have a boatload of young centers coming up through their system, such as Oliver Moore, Frank Nazar, Sacha Boisvert, and others, and it becomes less essential that Bedard stays at center through his whole career.

So, in conclusion, how concerned should we feel about Bedard’s lack of goal-scoring? Not much.

I firmly believe that he will catch fire at some point and the goals will come. He is too talented offensively for him to remain snakebitten forever.

However, I am mildly concerned about his prospects as an NHL center in the long run. We will need to see a major improvement in the faceoff dot for Bedard to be locked into the number one center role long-term.

However, if I were a betting man, I would bet that he can figure out the faceoffs. He is a hyper-competitive and driven kid, and he has lots of time to improve. And, if he doesn’t the Hawks have a plethora of young centers ready to pass the puck to Connor Bedard on their wing. That sounds like a pretty sweet gig!