Quote:
Originally Posted by ComixZone
After his rookie season, they transition him to 3rd line centre and played him with Brouwer and various other anchors. So they really never ever gave him a chance - and that's not just on the coaches (although I still argue 13/23, 19/93, 11/67 should have been the tandems), that falls back to Treliving cycling in Brouwer and Neal over the years. It's a really rotten place to put your already deficient head coaches in. Just goes to show you can't spend that type of money on players that are below-NHL caliber. Whether it's coaching hires, horrendous free agent signings - the impact cascades through the entire team.
The most baffling thing to me was the treatment of Bennett this season though. After the playoffs he had, he comes into this season just gets tossed aside. Ridiculous. That comes back to the hiring of Geoff Ward though...just heinous work on that hire. I also don't understand it from Ward's perspective, because in my eyes part of the reason why Ward even got hired was because of his play-in round success which came because of the Lucic-Bennett-Dube line. I just don't understand how Ward wasn't coming into this season thinking that Bennett was one of "his guys".
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This season was odd, all right. The PO line should have been used (though I’m not as aware up by Bennett’s POs as a lot of people).
Use as a 3rd line C was blocked a lot by an equal attempt to use Jankowski as a 3rd line C. I’m not sure why they went Janko over Bennett, aside from maybe body type. I’d at least have given them both a look.