Quote:
Originally Posted by BigThief
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I don't know how to break this to you, but NHL equivalency in a player's draft year is not an infallible predictor of how his career will turn out. It's not even the best predictor available at the time of the draft.
(I note in passing that Textcritic said nothing in that quote that he has contradicted in this thread. He did not say there was any particular element in Bennett's game that was elite; only that his scoring in his draft year was comparable to MacKinnon's.)
The quote from Textcritic that you are laughing at? That was from July, 2014 – BEFORE Bennett played a single NHL game. By the time he was established as an NHL regular (2015-16) MacKinnon had shown himself to be a clearly superior offensive player. That was before MacKinnon's breakout year, 2017-18, when his production almost doubled from 53 points to 97. Meanwhile, Bennett had regressed. He wouldn't top his rookie production until after his trade to Florida, and he
still has never scored 50 points in a season.
At the time they were drafted, Bennett and MacKinnon were roughly comparable players. Bennett was a lot closer to his ceiling, MacKinnon had immense growth still to go. There's a reason why Bennett was the last to be chosen of the big four prospects in the first tier of the 2014 draft.