Quote:
Originally Posted by Five-hole
It's a perfect storm for Bennett right now. He's a guy who believes that he should be a difference-maker (which is good), but gets in his own head very easily when he doesn't dominate night in and night out (which is bad). This gets in the way of him getting off the snide. So he'll try to be aggressive to try to get involved in the play, but this leads to him taking bad penalties, so then he starts thinking about not taking bad penalties.
Anybody who has done an activity where you need to be "in the zone" can tell you that when you're so far up your own ass, you don't even know what the area code for the zone is, and your performance is going to be awful.
Dude needs a couple of bounces. He also needs to learn how to expect a lot from himself, but also to take it easy on himself when he's not getting on the scoresheet provided he is otherwise playing well.
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I think your post is exceptional and reminded me that Backlund mentioned somewhere, (can't find the quote) that when he stopped worrying about things and just played his game that things started to come together.
I guess the next question is now that we have a diagnosis how do we help Bennett? Should he be more like Tkachuk and learn how to play the line or should he be more like Backlund who uses his line-mates. Tkachuk plays the game within the game, and although takes a lot of penaltis he draws a lot. Bennett hasn't really mastered the art of drawing penalties so taking penalties adds to his frustration. He looks serious most of the time so maybe he needs to learn some acting? On the other hand I don't believe Backlund has as much success without his line-mates so not having line-mates suited to Bennett's style of play and skill set has only compounded things. Should the Flames be more focused on giving Bennett the proper tools to succeed (which might be the addition of Janko and Lazar), or does Bennett need to reinvent himself a bit as to develop an niche or identity?