A few seconds a game? Just by the eye test (lol) on the graph, Tavares plays about 20% more than average against the #1 forwards. It looks to be about 20% for #1 defencemen too. 20% a game against one player might be a few (30ish) seconds a game against one particular player, over the course of an 82 game season that's 41 minutes against #1 forwards and #1 defensemen. And there's nothing in that graph that actually indicates any real numbers where you can tell me that it's only seconds per game. There's also nothing in that graph that suggests anything correlating performances to TOIQoC. You would actually need to provide some additional analysis to prove or disprove that link, Barzal and Tavares' relative % of icetime against opponents as a standalone stat does nothing to link or disprove the effect it had on their production. You've only made half an argument (tbh, it's a quarter of an argument because there's no real numbers) by posting one stat and doing no work to correlate it to production.
After writing the above paragraph, I even opened up paint to add some context, it looks to be slightly higher than 20% above average against first line forwards for Tavares
Auston Matthews played against only slightly higher competition than Barzal in his rookie season (29.1) and then did extremely well against top competition (29.71) as a sophomore. I believe that Barzal will improve and take on heavier minutes as well, especially since he's a young player and improving with an already elite skillset. But it IS harder to put up numbers against better players and Tavares did play against harder competition than Barzal did this year. What Barzal will do next year and in the years beyond is conjecture.
