Quote:
Originally Posted by Textcritic
I remain convinced that his situation is predominantly of his own making—he has had a propensity to make poor decisions with the puck, and has not done well at utilizing his line mates.
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I am of the opinion that, while he needed to learn to utilize his linemates as a 20 year old sophomore (just like Dylan Larkin, Nathan MacKinnon, and countless other precocious talents), his decision making struggles were a function of his role.
Rather than empowering the player to take risks and develop, the team attempted to completely tone down that aspect of his game and it resulted in him playing far more conservatively as a passer compared to his rookie year. This led to him second-guessing his decisions, manifesting in what you alude to.
We took him off the powerplay as a sophomore as well, killing his confidence to make plays with the puck.
We cut his icetime down below the mark where he would be able to make a mistake one shift, and bravely correct it the next the way a Gaudreau was and is allowed to do.
As a center we played him with slower, older wingers, resulting in a cognitive dissonance between playing the attack style inherent to his game and not playing his game at all.
We played him at a position (wing) that stifled his speed through the middle of the ice, whether it was on the wing of Markus Granlund or Mark Jankowski he was playing alongside worse centers than he himself.
I think we've messed up every aspect of his development. Every year he has a stretch where he begins building confidence. Confidence with and without the puck to play his game freely. January 2016. November 2016. April 2017. December 2017. April 2019. February 2020. Probably others that I am forgetting. But every time he starts getting confident, we expect that confidence to just maintain itself. That's not realistic for anyone in the NHL, especially not a young player. Eventually the low quality of linemates like Garnet Hathaway or Tobias Rieder or Troy Brouwer or Curtis Lazar becomes a source of frustration, and those poor decisions and the propensity to play conservatively returns. And then Bennett disappears, looking disinterested and nervous. Instead of building on his stretches of confident play, we basically send him the message that he's just a streaky bottom-of-roster player. There's a feedback loop in his confidence.
A player like Derek Ryan can survive in these circumstances because he's on the tail end of his career and not so worried about individual success, and also has established his own game with guys like Skinner and Mangiapane to where he doesn't second guess himself. He makes good decisions because he doesn't have cognitive dissonance between playing his game and playing a safe game. I don't think a player like Bennett will ever succeed without the freedom to just play his game, and it'll never happen in the role we continue to utilize him.
It's all about confidence.
And I also think the toedrags and such are overblown. For instance you'll probably see Boston's top players get burned a few times tonight and see the puck go the other way. And you'll see Tkachuk, Lindholm, Gaudreau screw up some entries too. They'll just get right back at it the next shift. The next PP.
I have no idea why I typed all that out. I have serious ADHD.