[united]

I've always thought of Bennett as more of a winger because he likes attacking from width and is such a tenacious forechecker.

With regard to his forechecking, he often chases other teams' defencemen behind their goal line in pursuit, relative to other centres, causing one of his wingers to have to play third man high in the offensive zone. Of course, when the other team successfully transitions to the neutral zone and then offensive zone, that results in said winger having to deploy as F1 in initial coverage. On the cycle, the main goal of the offence is to force switches and by Bennett having to switch with a winger later in coverage, they are doing the offense's job for them. Now, that is fine if you have good defensive wingers, but part of the issues Bennett's line had last year is neither of his most common wingers are particularly good defenders nor are they good outlets for clean breakouts through the middle.

For those reasons I have been hoping we'll see Bennett and Jankowski on the same line. That way, like the Sharks with Thornton and Pavelski, the two of them can competently swap roles on the fly when the situation calls for it. Bennett can remain at centre ice as a default, while Jankowski can adequately cover for Bennett as third man high and F1 when Bennett is relentlessly forechecking deep in the other team's zone. Or, maybe you deploy Jankowski at centre and let Bennett loose as a high-tempo two-way winger.