Originally Posted by GranteedEV
I doubt Gelinas was the culprit in any of thr mishandling.
If you ask me, it was a case of typecasting, and head coaches who lacked that little bit of outside-the-box thinking that Hartley, Sutter, and Quennville possessed.
Hartley, in my opinion, saw a ton of upside in Bennett. If he had been given another year with the kid, I feel his trajectory would have been very different. The way Bob used to glow about Bennett, Ferland, Gaudreau, Monahan, Brodie, etc, you could definitely sense that he was a superior talent evaluator. But he wanted to play run and gun hockey, with a collapse defense and stretch pass breakouts. Systems-wise, it wasn't a "championship" style of play and it cost him a job.
The next season, the head coach I wanted to replace Bob was someone who had proven themselves at other levels, but were not retreads. Our version of a homegrown "Jon Cooper" so to speak. In that sense, I think Brad Treliving was well on thr same page actually. The two names that really seemed enticing were Sheldon Keefe and Jared Bednar. Maybe the Leafs didn't give Brad permission to speak with Keefe (since Keefe was/is Kyle Dubas' right hand man). And Bednar ended up signing in Colorado, but I do remember hearing that the Flames had interest in him, so maybe Brad just wasn't willing to get into a bidding war for an unproven coach.
So he hired Gulutzan.
Gulutzan had all the right ideas, but just lacked... coaching talent. Really, that's what it was. Even in Dallas, his teams lacked discipline WRT penalties, whereas Bob Hartley's Flames team was highly disciplined.
Gulutzan just didn't have the vision needed to be a top-end head coach. Whether it was Brodie, Chiasson, Giordano, Grossmann, Bennett, Brouwer, Hamilton, Bartkowski, Engelland, Kulak, there were always things I felt Gulutzan was just... stiff about. Again, I think it was a lack of visualizing where these players could be or needed to be or in some cases, were not.
He was just the wrong guy for the job. And I will say that there were things he coached well. It was evident he was really succeeding in the development of guys like Ferland, Monahan, and Gaudreau. This trio's success was more than just playing together, the details of their games peaked and all three probably played their best hockey for Gulutzan before injuries crept into the picture. 2017 Playoffs version of Sean Monahan though? That was a dangerous weapon, not just a onedimensional scorer.
But Gulutzan was just not seeing the big picture.
His first line for Bennett was Tkachuk - Bennett - Brouwer. In Gulutzan's eyes this was a truculant third line with young skill, a responsible estavlished vet, and a cycle-oriented style of play. In my eyes? This was a line where we put our fast young puck-rushing center between two of the slowest wingers on the roster - a line that wouldn't be able to rush the puck or distrupt defenses on the forecheck. So it didn't work.
A more forward-thinking coach might have thought to promote Frolik to that young "second" line to add the footspeed and forechecking ability that Brouwer lacked. Since Brouwer was a possession black hole and Backlund a proven possession veteran, at least they could have offset each other as Stasny and Brouwer did in St. Louis. But instead the 3M line was formed.
And that is what really created a glass ceiling on Bennett's career as a Flame even outside of the whole center/winger nonsense. The 3M line. The 3M line was really damn good. Peters didn't break it up after Gulutzan because... why would you? And Gaudreau-Monahan were treated as if they were a premier Winger-Centre combo a la Matthews-Marner, when IMO they were moresi just an elite winger with a solid center a la Iginla-Langow. And then Gulutzan moved Bennett to the wing to make room for Rookie Jankowski, which was always just a poor evaluation, since Bennett was a superior centre to Jankowski. I remember really wanting Gulutxan to try a Jankowski-Bennett-Czarnik line because it would have put all three in a better position to succeed. Now two of them are out of the league and the other one is a top two line centre.
The other issue was Peters is that even in Carolina, he'd been a guy who kept Eric Staal in his prime on the wing, and a developing Elias Lindholm on the wing. So it came as no surprise, unfortunately, that Bennett was typecast as a winger without a fair opportunity to play both positions for Bill.
Now we're at Wardo.
I actually think Ward had real ideas! Lindholm at centre! 3M version 2.0 with Mangiapane! Lucic-Bennett-Dube come playoff time. In this sense he was way better than Gully and Peters.
Wardo just lacked execution. Just not NHL-calibre, which is weird considering he understudied under Claude Julien for nearly a decade.
Finally came Sutter, and by that point... I'm not sure what the thought process is. Bennett had already made his trade request so maybe Sutter felt it was pointless to move Bennett to 2C or whatever.
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