Quote:
Originally Posted by Crown Royal
I like Bennett for what he is, a bottom 6 banger that can pot 20-30 points, but it gets tiresome when some people keep making excuses for the guy.
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At that production level...20 to 30 is a huge range to fall within. If he was producing 30 points or closer to the 26-27 he had been putting up his salary is a bit easier to take. 30 points usually will put someone in the top 200 scoring forwards. But he had 12 in 52 games this year. Thats close to half his 27 in 71 last year. So factor in him, Lucic, Jankowski, add in the Brouwer and Stone buyouts. That is a lot of money that is not producing. One of these on their own is manageable, but combine a few of these to get a list of 5 players and it explains why the team was so mediocre this year.
I think the team will give Bennett next year to see if he can bounce back, although it likely hinges on how he looks coming out of this reboot. But Lucic and the buyouts are not going away. So it will take some work to squeeze more out of this 4.3 million that is currently allocated to Bennett and Jankowski.