Quote:
Originally Posted by Flash Walken
you're remembering correctly. Bennett was unhappy with his usage, his agent spoke with Treliving, Bennett got a shot with Tkachuk.
Bennetts numbers went up, Tkachuk's numbers went down, but outside of that he was producing at a 4th line rate.
We went over this last year and the year before. Bennett was consistently producing fourth line rate tangible numbers that had him tied or behind the contemporary 4th liners on the team.
You can read some of the posts here:
Same story this year, just worse because he's not getting reps outside of the 4th line and his production is illustrating that. He's not getting those reps because there are simply better options.
I predicted this would happen with the Lucic addition. Lucic is providing everything Bennett provided plus more and that's pushed Bennett down the depth chart. As bad as i think Lucic is, he's significantly outperformed bennett this year, and ideally Lucic is a 4th liner, so what does that make Bennett?
Bennett is now not just a 4th line player, he's an expensive 4th line player.
That's no bueno.
With Dube and Mangiapane looking ok and pretty good, there's just no justification to give Bennett extra reps.
Once again it looks like the flames are going to try that in this game against Chicago, but at this point I think that's as much to satisfy Bennett's camp as it is to position him for a trade.
The rumour about the flames laughing off trade proposals isn't exactly going to go away with this new rumour that Bennett doesn't feel like he has a position on this team.
This could be the last gasp before the plunge. Give him minutes, see what happens, hope you can capitalize on a marginal improvement on the trade offers you received a month ago.
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He's been on average a 7-8 guy in the league for the past three seasons. Not a fourth liner.
To go dice up his ice time from when he was given more opportunity to less is a worthless exercise unless you plan on doing the same with the other 180 forwards that play down the roster.
He's been off this year, I'm fine with him taking his turn munching popcorn, but he's not a fourth liner. He's a bottom six guy that creates more than his share of chances, doesn't finish, but plays a physical role and can fight.
That has value, and likely doesn't have him over paid.