[sureLoss]

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“I don’t have a preference,” Bennett insisted prior to the Flames’ bye. “I’m comfortable in both positions and I can play both positions. It doesn’t really matter to me. I don’t know if I am a better centre or better winger.”

“Do I think young players that are centremen like Sam, are they more effective at wing early on in the NHL? Yeah, I do, if you can get a good veteran presence with them,” said Flames head coach Glen Gulutzan. “But if you put them in the right spot, they can develop their skill-set at centre, too. So it’s a little bit of a balancing act with a young player.

“It’s a lot harder to develop a winger and then say, ‘Oh, by the way, we need you to play 40 games at centre.’ It’s like the pickle and the cucumber, right? You can turn a cucumber into a pickle, but once you’ve got a pickle, you can’t make it into a cucumber.

“Right now, he’s finding his way. If we have to put him on the wing at some time, we would, but we’re trying to develop him. He’s going to be a good two-way centre. He is already. He’s been able to hold his own both ways, so I’d rather be able to move a centre to wing at some point than try to make him a winger and then move him back to the centre position.”

Of course, you don’t want to spoil the cucumber either.

“It’s all about slotting,” Gulutzan said. “If you slot him up into the first-line hole and say, ‘Ok, you’ve got Joe Thornton tonight, you’ve got (Ryan) Getzlaf tomorrow, you’ve got (Anze) Kopitar the next night and then you’re going to come back against (Jonathan) Toews,’ well there could be some regression there because he’s a young guy playing against established, top-of-their-class players.

“But if you slot him in the right place, you can develop in the right areas so that eventually — and I believe this — he’ll be able to play against top guys night in and night out. But there are not too many 20-year-olds yet that can.”

“When you look at Sam, what are his attributes that make you believe he’s going to be a good centre?” said Treliving, repeating the question before rolling out a detailed response. “Well, first of all, he has good speed, great quickness. He plays with tempo in his game. To me, he’s a driver. What I mean by that is he’s an attacker. He attacks seams. He can push defencemen back. He takes pucks to the net. His is an abrasive game. It’s a north-south game. It’s not necessarily one where there’s a lot of east-west into it. Sam, he’s a direct player.

“And then he has the ability to make plays. He has good vision. He can distribute the puck. He can shoot the puck. He can do a lot of things. And subtly, and people might not see this, he’s starting to expand his role. He’s seeing penalty-killing time. And not only is that good in terms of the immediate, because he’s doing a good job at it … But also it’s a way to continue to build that defensive side of his game.”

Because the Flames aren’t simply trying to develop a centre.

They’re trying to develop a top-tier, two-way centre.