Bear was our second best even strength point producer on the back end last year. Without PP time he’s not going to hit 40 points. You can count on one hand the nhl defensemen who could put up 40+ points with the pp time bear gets in the nhl. Young D men have ups and downs. He hasn’t even hit the 150 game mark yet. He’s had 2 pretty serious concussions in his pro career so far and god forbid he looks a step behind for a couple of games vs the top team in the nhl currently. In fact of the 13 games bear has dressed this season 7 have been vs Toronto.
Why isn’t there similar criticism to a player like Yamamoto who is struggling to keep up a .5 ppg clip stapled to last years league wide mvp?
Because there is only 2 or 3 people in this thread ragging on Bear and the other 95% of it is people quoting them and defending him. Yes he’s a young player, yes he’s struggling, as many young D do, especially those on the tail end of an injury.
Yamamoto, like you just mentioned with Bear, gets 0 PP time. But he brings other elements when he doesn’t produce, like IMO he’s one of the best FWD in the league on getting in on the forecheck and stripping pucks. If there’s a battle odds are he’s coming out with the puck.
But this isn’t a Yamamoto thread so digress.
With that said we will see how Bear responds the rest of the season, we have an upcoming log jam on RD this offseason, with 4, 2 UFA pending, who should be in the top 6 next year. Someone is going to get moved or leave and Bear just needs to prove again that it shouldn’t be him.
I see 95% of the people in here rationally saying these thoughts but 99% of this thread is people arguing with 5% that are in every thread on every single player, or the team in general, when they struggle.
