Quote:
Originally Posted by The Boy Wonder
I guess no matter how much you and I argue I won't be able to convince you that Bennett is any good and you won't be able to convince me that the flames have given him a fair shake. When he played on backlunds line two years ago he was excellent. Then he was given an opportunity to centre his own line and that failed, but to say he's been given a fair chance playing in the top six under this coaching staff is just false.
Bennett shouldn't pass either gaudreau or tkachuk on the LW depth but they should rather look at playing him and tkachuk on the same line with either janko or backlund. All three of those guys have shown chemistry playing together with maybe the exception of janko and tkachuk but I think moving either tkachuk or Bennettt to RW and trying it out would be a welcome move. This club has lost 4 of 6 and yet we trot out the same forward line combinations no matter what.
Bennett hasn't, under gulutzan, had any real opportunities to seize a top six role... if you actually believe he was given the same shot a Ferland at playing on the top line? ~20 games between last year and early this season where Ferland looked terrible but hotbed a chance to play through it.
If you want to blame Bennett for this team being poorly coached and not winning games be my guest but that's an idiot take on things
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Backlund bumps up everyone’s game. Just look at Bouma and Colborne’s strong seasons as an example and now where are they? Bennett’s needs further development before he earns a top 6 spot. I certainly haven’t felt like he’s played his way on to one of those 2 lines at any point during his time with Gaudreau or whoever.
He’s playing where he should be right now, 3rd line minutes with some 2nd unit powerplay time. I’m not sure why you’re so against him playing with Jankowski either, the 2 played excellent together throughout December, but his play has dropped off significantly since then and the bad penalties have crept into his game again. Until he finds consistently to his game and plays betters in all areas of his game, I think the linemates and minutes he’s getting is fine. It’s not like Gaudreau or Tkachuk need help from Bennett to prop up their games right now anyway, they’re doing well with their current linemates.
Lastly, the coaching has been fine in my opinion, if certain players on the bottom 6 scored at the same rate as they did last season under the same coach, we’d probably be comfortably in a playoff position. But we are no where close to beinf an elite team until we statt to upgrade a lot of the forwards on this team.