Getting Excited About Ethan Bear

Ethan Bear’s season has just come to a close. His Seattle
Thunderbirds lost in the WHL final to the Brandon Wheat Kings after
steamrolling the competition up to that point. No doubt he’s disappointed right
now, but the Edmonton Oilers should be excited about the progress Bear made
during this campaign.

Bear was drafted in the 5th round, 124th
Overall in the 2015 NHL entry draft. With a June birthday, he’s still just 18
years old. He has not yet signed an Entry Level Contract with the team, but that
should be coming soon. At this point, Ethan Bear is possibly the club’s most
promising prospect defender and certainly the most promising in the CHL.

The young defender has one trait that makes him stand out from
the crowd of prospects that includes Reinhart, Musil, Oesterle, and Jones: He
shoots right.

Of course, shooting right isn’t enough all by itself to make
him bypass all those developing players. That said, it’s enough to draw a
pretty big spotlight onto his play. There’s no doubt that virtue of being one
of only a handful of right-shooting defenders in the entire organization the
club has a vested interest in his success.

Well, “a handful” might be overstating things. Here are all
of the Oiler players or prospects that shoot right in the entire system:

Mark Fayne

Adam Clendening (RFA)

Eric Gryba (UFA)

John Marino (NCAA)

Ethan Bear (WHL)

That’s the expansive list. It’s all of five players long,
only one of whom has an NHL contract for next season. And, if we’re being
honest with ourselves, if Mark Fayne is a regular defender for the Oilers next
year then the blueline is still a wreck.

Ethan Bear was drafted after a 69GP, 13-25-38 campaign. He
has played for Team Canada at the U-17s and U-18’s and after this season he
should be a strong candidate for the World Junior Championship U-20 team as
well.

Bear took a huge leap forward offensively, leading the
blueline for the Seattle Thunderbirds. Seattle’s blueline was very much a
hodgepodge of undrafted over-agers and kids, with Bear as the anchor. During
the regular season in his first post-draft season Ethan Bear contributed a
stellar 69GP, 19-46-65 which was third on his team behind only New York
Islander prospect (and one time possible Oiler draftee) Mathew Barzal and New
York Rangers prospect Ryan Gropp.

On the Thunderbirds, Bear’s 65 points were 24 more than the
next closest defenseman, 20 year old Jerret Smith. If Barzal was the offensive
tide raising all ships in the harbor then he did a poor job raising the other
blueliners. It’s clear that Bear became a key to the offense of his club.

In terms of his place in the WHL as a whole, Ethan Bear was
5th in WHL scoring by defensemen. Numbers 1 and 2 in WHL D scoring
were by Ivan Provorov (73) and Macoy Erkamps (71). So Bear managed to get
within 8 points of the player taken 7th overall in the same draft
that he, himself, went 124th overall. What makes it doubly
impressive is that the Wheat Kings scored 319 goals in the regular season while
the Thunderbirds only scored 228. So Bear picked up just 8 fewer points than
Provorov while his team managed 90 fewer opportunities for him to pick up
points at all.

This takes us to the Playoffs.

During the WHL playoffs, Ethan Bear’s club crushed
opposition right up until they ran into the Wheat Kings. They did that, in
part, because Bear’s offensive game geared up yet again. Bear finished with
18GP, 8-14-22 during the run the Thunderbirds made. Mathew Barzal lead Seattle
in scoring with 26 points. Bear was 2nd in Thunderbird scoring with
22 points. The player in 3rd place on the team only had 15 points.

Bear’s offense during the post-season placed him atop the
WHL’s scoring by defensemen. Wheat King forwards were 1, 2, 3, and 4 in overall
scoring with 21 games played and yet their highest scoring defenders had just
15 (Clague), 14 (Erkamps), and 13 points (Provorov). Bear picked up 7 more
points than the next highest scoring defender in the WHL playoffs and he did it
in 3 less games.

Ethan Bear is a prospect the Oilers can be excited about. He
was a late pick who just came off of an incredible regular season and playoffs.
He is playing an integral role on his WHL club and he just happens to play the
exact position that Edmonton is lacking the most.

That’s not to say that we can pencil him in for NHL duties
on the top pair in the Fall or anything quite so preposterous. It would be
folly to try to push him along in his development faster than is good for the
kid, but he has to be properly identified as Edmonton’s best CHL aged defender
right now. He’s proven to be worthy of further investment without a doubt.

A lot can happen between now and when Bear is ready to make
the jump to professional hockey. He’s a shorter defender at 5’11” but he’s a
stocky 200 pounds and as a right-shot he can overcome the fact that he isn’t a
tower. He was previously regarded highly for his defensive play before the
offense bloomed this season. While at the open development camp this past
summer, indeed Bear was one of the few defensemen that Connor McDavid didn’t consistently
embarrass in drills.

Bear is already a pleasant surprise doing what he has done
as a 5th rounder. By virtue of his shooting preference he had
everybody’s eyes on him this season. What he did while we were all watching was
impressive enough that we should be excited about this young man’s potential.