Quote:
Originally Posted by pepper24
Bennett’s been bad for a while not just this year. Zero points this year and long stretches last season. Long leash at center which was failure and will force Flames to pay up for Backlund. At wing he still has no points.
Not blind hate but reality backed by stats. Long leash from draft position and not living up to it. Right pick at time and this happens.
No trade value so really no choice on giving up yet. Maybe he can be a ok 3rd line winger but ceiling of being Flames highest pick ever and franchise center seems unlikely.
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There’s dozens of examples of young players who struggle with consistency early in their careers, often for years before becoming great top line or top six forwards. It happens often and it’s amazing how little patience a lot of fans have towards it. Even on our team now, Backlund is a good example.
I think one factor that never comes up is even though he was our highest draft pick ever, unlike the other 3 picked before him he hasn’t been gifted with our teams most talented players to work with and the amount of ice time that comes with it. While I do think Monohan was a more NHL ready player out of the draft due to size and maturity, his “leash” was a lot longer because we needed him to be our #1 Centre and there wasn’t any other legitimate options to be worthy of not letting him develop on the top line often in his first year and almost exclusively in his second year.
If you reverse the order of when they were drafted and let Bennett play his entire first NHL season on the top line with Johnny and Hudler without much risk to be demoted, I’d bet he’s a completely different player today. Instead he’s left to figure his crap out centering a line with the offensively handicapped Brouwer most of last year and now with two new, young linemates for last few games this year.
I’m sure there’s a lot of factors leading to where he’s at so far this year but his talent we drafted him for hasn’t disappeared, he’s just stuck in a rut and I’m confident he will get on a role again soon and if he can get comfortable with a couple decent linemates for an extended time, we will be seeing signs of why we drafted him more consistently.