Quote:
Originally Posted by ComixZone
It gets worse when you look at what other teams do with their top picks. Sam Reinhart struggled just like Bennett has, but Buffalo then stapled him to players better than him - and I think in no small part thanks that decision, Reinhart started hitting his stride and started producing more.
It's not Sam Bennett's fault that Treliving has royally screwed the pooch on building the bottom 6. Nor was it Sam Bennett's fault that Treliving signed Glen Gulutzan as the head coach. I'd argue, prior to Derek Ryan last year - Sam Bennett has been our best player in the bottom 6 since he arrived in that spot. That's not how you successfully develop young players - and it's not like we have a long history of amazing success developing players at the AHL or NHL level, so the blind faith in blaming the player and praising the team seems misguided to me.
I'm not saying Bennett would have been the 90 point player that we all envisioned on day 1, but the mixture of Glen Gulutzan being an absolutely horrific NHL head coach, and Treliving's inability to build a bottom 6 has hurt Sam's development significantly. He is what he is today - which is a 3rd line player who could still one day work his way up a roster, but it's best to just accept him as that 3rd line player who shows up for big games - and that's not a bad thing. Stop looking for faults in his game, because perfect players don't exist on 3rd lines. He has his ups and downs, but there are plenty of positives - just maybe not as many as we would have liked to start this season, but that same view exists across the entire roster, or at least it should - as it has not been a stellar start to the year.
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This post has me thinking, what are good examples of players who spend several years in the bottom six and grow into top six players? Stats wise, I seem to recall Langkow going from a high 20's/low 30's points per year player in his first 4 years, and eventually growing into a pretty consistent 50-60 point player - but I don't really know what sort of development path he took. He was taken 5th overall in his draft, so was he considered a disappointment in his earlier years? Backlund definitely took a few years to get going as well, and I think people are pretty happy with how he's turned out. But did either of them break out while still playing on the 3rd line?
The main player that comes to mind as someone who was still able to establish themselves as a top 6 player stuck on the 3rd line is Jordan Staal - being stuck behind Crosby and Malkin. But he was putting up 40-50 points from the 3rd line pretty consistently from the start, and he never really grew much past that.
So does Bennett need extended time in the top 6 to prove that he can be a top 6 player? The issue is that he is clearly stuck behind better players at both left wing and centre - it would be easier if he (or say, Tkachuk) could switch over to right wing so that Frolik could be bumped down. As is, it's a costly experiment for him to displace any of Gaudreau/Monahan/Tkachuk/Backlund/Lindholm down to the 3rd line. But if there is potential to unlock top-6 Bennett, it could be worth seeing if Backlund or Lindholm can carry a 3rd line by themselves.