yes, good points both Enoch and Vinny.
I love playoff Bennett, don't have much hope for regular season Bennett. As the old saying goes; fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. In this case it's fool me three or four times now.
clinging to the hope that Bennett can carry his playoff performance into the regular season even 50% of the time is not the way the Flames should be making player personnel decisions. It's boarder line delusional. I don't think Bennett can consistently play that way during the regular season and he doesn't seem to be effective otherwise. The game is called too tightly and it would be too much physically and mentally, I think, for any player to run around like he does in the playoffs. Ferland couldn't sustain it.
Even if the Flames were to get to the conference finals, it would not be surprising in the least for Bennett's effectiveness to drop off, or see him missing games due to injury. Further, his career would likely be cut short if playoff SB was regular season SB. it's not a durable way of playing the game. It may very well turn out that a 34-35 year old Backlund is still better than 26-27 year old SB. I don't see a significant drop off for Backlund. Contrary to popular belief, not every player falls off a cliff after 30.
Seems like Zary is, hopefully, the heir apparent to Backlund's tough mins 2C role. might as well keep the vet to mentor the kid in a year to two.
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