Quote:
Originally Posted by GranteedEV
I would say that despite certain peoples' critcisims of Bennett "doing too much himself" it was the opposite that I observed. Often Bennett gave up on his own skill and would dump the puck in, and then that line played a lot of dump and chase where the RWer usually failed on the chase part. I don't think Bennett is a player who inherently thrives in dumping and chasing (which is why he had more success under Hartley and fewer penalties), despite his forechecking ability, and I think ultimately Bennett's WHOLE LINE made very few plays using their puck skills to generate early offense. When Jagr was on that line, all three guys were carrying the puck through the neutral zone and this was resulting in plays, albeit not puck luck as Jagr in his final two seasons in the NHL could not score goals. Bennett was every bit a part of the success of the Jagr-Bennett-Versteeg and Bennett-Jankowski-Jagr lines.
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The funny part of it is, it's indisputable that Bennett playing with Jagr was at his most productive but my impression was always that Jagr was by far the weakest player on the line. He just didn't do much (but Jankowski and Bennett were at their best at that time). Then, as you say, Hathaway stepped in and it continued for a while, but not forever.
I don't blame coaching at all for having Ferland on the top line and Tkachuk on the second. Those lines were working great and you don't often want to change what works just to experiment. I think to some degree it has to be on Bennett to force his way up. The fact that Ferland tailed off so badly might be the opening to do so.