Quote:
Originally Posted by SuperMatt18
Gulutzan, Peters, and Ward all have to share the blame but I don't think it's all Gulutzan's fault
Gulutzan played Bennett at center probably more than Peters and Ward did.
In 16-17 under Gulutzan Bennett's most common lines were:
Brouwer - Bennett - Versteeg
Chiasson - Bennett - Gaudreau
Chiasson - Bennett - Versteeg
So he was primarily deployed as a center - the issue was that Flames team had terrible forward depth. Brouwer was terrible, and the Flames played Gaudreau-Monahan, and Tkachuk-Backlund-Frolik together pretty consistently and it left poor linemates for Bennett who at the time was still learning how to be an NHL center.
The next season they called up Jankowski and the issue was Bennett and him actually did have success as the third line for the Flames.
Bennett - Jankowski - Hathaway
Bennett - Jankowski - Jagr
Gaudreau - Monahan - Bennett
Those were the three most common lines for Bennett in 17-18.
So Gulutzan gets some blame - but I think a big part of it too was the Flames roster construction was just so poor at the time that with Backlund and Monahan as your top 2 centers (which at the time was probably justified) it just left poor options for Bennett to play with as center on the third line, and he found some success on the wing with Jankowski since it allowed them to have a more talented third line than if you played Bennett at 3rd line C and Janko at 4th line C.
Part of it is the Flames always prioritizing attempting to win over development. Gulutzan knew he needed to win to save his job - and playing Bennett and Jankowski together (53.5% xGF that season) gave them a better chance of winning than playing them separately
Then that carried over into 18-19 with Peters where you had Gaudreau-Monahan-Lindholm, Tkachuk-Backlund-Frolik as a top 6 that led the Flames to first place in the Western conference, and it left Bennett-Jankowski-Neal as your third line (Bennett did get some time with Tkachuk and Backlund when Frolik was hurt I think).
One thing that really killed Bennett was Troy Brouwer and James Neal - they were meant to be the wingers that would add the depth to help him develop as an NHL center, and both were absolute busts.
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This is a lot of what I was saying. Janko-Bennett-Neal made sense on paper. Your two future stars and a vet scorer. But Janko wasn't that good and Neal sucked ass.
Back then Bennett didn't look like a centre. If you look at posts from those years people thought he had tunnel vision, and just made poor decisions (toe drags all the time). He could have stood some centre time in the A maybe.