{"id":233723,"date":"2025-10-23T00:16:29","date_gmt":"2025-10-23T00:16:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/233723\/"},"modified":"2025-10-23T00:16:29","modified_gmt":"2025-10-23T00:16:29","slug":"is-bedard-or-schaefer-the-better-player-to-start-a-franchise-with","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/233723\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Bedard or Schaefer the better player to start a franchise with?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Chicago Blackhawks<\/a> and New York Islanders <\/a>both have a lot to feel good about after the first couple weeks of the NHL season, especially relating to their respective recent first overall picks.<\/p>\n

After a challenging sophomore season, Chicago\u2019s Connor Bedard has found a new gear, scoring two goals and dishing out five assists for seven points in seven games while skating to a plus-3 rating. While plus\/minus certainly has its limitations, Bedard drew major criticism for a combined minus-80 start to his career through his first two years.<\/p>\n

For New York\u2019s Matthew Schaefer, it looks so far like no adjustment period will be needed for him to establish himself as a legitimate star defenseman. A dynamic skater who covers ice exceptionally well, the No. 1 overall pick from the 2025 NHL Draft has taken a stranglehold on the early Calder Trophy race with seven points in his first six games.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday\u2019s episode of\u00a0Daily Faceoff LIVE<\/a>, host Irfaan Gaffar and co-host and former NHL defenseman Colby Cohen responded to a question from a viewer about which of these two future faces of the NHL would be more desirable to build a franchise from scratch around.<\/p>\n

Irfaan Gaffar: Time for #AskDFO. The one question, Colby, that completely stood out to me right away: If you had to pick Schaefer or Bedard to start a franchise around, who would you pick?<\/p>\n

Colby Cohen: Schaefer. And it\u2019s nothing against Connor Bedard, because he obviously looks the bit of a franchise player to start this season, but I\u2019m somebody who believes in building your team from the back out, and when you have the opportunity to have a franchise number-one defenseman, I personally think that\u2019s where you start. You obviously need that forward, that center as well, and if you ask the Chicago Blackhawks when they went through their dynasty, obviously a lot of that had to do with Kane and Toews, but you have Keith who\u2019s a first-ballot Hall-of-Famer, and you have Seabrook who\u2019s not far behind. My personal preference would have been Schaefer based on what we\u2019ve seen\u2026 but that\u2019s a great question that you\u2019re asking.<\/p>\n

You can watch the full segment and the rest of the episode here\u2026<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Chicago Blackhawks and New York Islanders both have a lot to feel good about after the first…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":233724,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-233723","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233723"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233723\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/233724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}