Flames are committed to keeping Sam Bennett at centre

[Stanley]

Originally Posted by Bingo

The biggest reason I see upside is the immaturity in his game; he can't help being 20. He forces it because he so badly wants to make things happen. Lately that is subsiding though and his cycle game with Versteeg is picking up.

I think Gulutzan is doing a very good job of slowly altering both Monahan and Bennett's game into NHL 200 foot center styles and that takes time.

With Bennett playing a little smarter now he's due to have a big game, and when that happens I'll be really curious to see what it does for his confidence.

But forcing it, taking dumb penalties, some of the turnovers all speak to a young guy wanting something so badly that he gets in his own way in my mind.

Completely agree. I honestly think he will become a very, very good two-way centre with huge offensive upside. I like the bite in his game. Perhaps facing adversity this season will pay dividends later on..

[Tibnadian_tpd]

deleted

[transplant99]

Mind numbing how some are completely writing off a 20 year old kid who was injured for an entire season of potential NHL development.

Actually its kind of amusing.

There is every possibility he does bust out (though entirely unlikely) but there is just as much chance he blossoms into an elite C in the league.

People have zero patience any more.

[transplant99]

Originally Posted by Tibnadian_tpd

Thanks Everlast, your post makes no great exaggerations as to what Sam Bennett will be, while raising your point that he will get better. That type of post is definitely palatable and respectable to the CPer's that might not agree with your opinion, especially in comparison to a MrMastodonFarm style post.

It's not hard to see that Sam Bennett will be a steady, play driving, rambunctious, good two way player, that will chip in between 40-65 points a year, whilst proving to be invaluable in the playoffs for the Flames.

I have to side with Da Chief, only because MrMastodonFarm keeps promulgating his opinions, as if he is the gold standard of evaluating young hockey players. He compares Bennett (in every facet) quite favourably to Monahan, Tkachuk and Gaudreau, all of whom have objectively produced much better in their young careers than Bennett. He also has stated Bennett will be "A TOP GOAL SCORER in the NHL" as if he has a great track record of prognosticating. It was like one of those "mark my words" posts, that is unlikely to come to fruition. He was and will likely be wrong about that, and was also wrong about Sam Bennett finishing with 20goals and 20 assists this year (which he stated in certain terms). I have tried to view his posts objectively to give him a fair shake, but he often makes snide remarks to people he is responding to, or he once again states his opinions in such an extreme definitive way, that you think he has a crystal ball into the future. Invariably he also fails to offer a nuanced opinion that gives a sense of perspective or the possibility of being wrong, which is why his takes are viewed as abrasive for some posters. Can you just calm down a bit, not think the world of your opinions, and be nicer to people, sir? lol

I was not aware his season was over.

[Erick Estrada]

I still think he's going to be a better overall player than Monahan when all is said and done.

[GranteedEV]

Originally Posted by MarkGio

I don't like these excuses.

1) Being on the #2PP unit means you're facing the #2 PK unit.

Not really. Most PP units face the same penalty killers more-or-less. Also he isn't on #2PP, Frolik is. But apparently this means he isn't a centre.

2) These lousy teammates that Bennett's been playing with have been more successful than Bennett.

If a team offers Patrick Sieloff to us for Sam Bennett, you take Sieloff? Because that is what we paid for Chiasson, for a reason. And he has been a solid 10th-best forward for us, but that's all he's been. Expecting Bennett to produce like a top 6 guy while being attached to the hip to our 10th-best forward is a fallacy.

And outside of power play scoring as a garbage man on stacked units, Brouwer has never had any 5-on-5 NHL success. Up until last year's single run, he was one of the worst playoff performers in the league too. At present he has the worst shot metric stats among regular forwards on the team, which is par for the course for him.

And which roster carries a load of elite talents in all top 9 spots?

Which roster has top 6 production out of its 3rd line center who gets 4th line ice time?

And which roster decides to put it's struggling young talents on its top lines?

Chicken-and-Egg. Bennett didn't struggle until he was taken off the top lines.

What's would you do?

Keep him at center and replace Chiasson with Ferland, and stop playing him primarily with the Jokipakka-Engelland pairing. Kulak-Engelland exists and has been undeniably better. Lastly the Backlund line should carry the third pair. Good sheltering is about balance of linemates, not about aggressive line matching. Get him back on PP2, as he needs the confidence boost more than Frolik.

Give Bennett the two best line mates and face them against other teams 4th lines, just to give Bennett better numbers?

Actually, I don't think Bennett needs sheltering in the sense of facing other teams' worst players. Even if he were facing Toews and co on a nightly basis, I wouldn't be worried if he had quality on-ice teammates like Gio. But it doesn't really matter what I think, as I am not the one panicking about him.

That would mean the Flames 4th line gets scored on when it faces the opponents good lines. The Flames are trying to compete, not inflate one player's numbers. If Bennett can't produce 5-on-5 against 3rd line competition, that's not a good sign.

Up until, like, three games ago during Monahan's hot streak, Bennett was outproducing our "number one center" 5-on-5. He is still outproducing Stajan. And competition quality is a bit of a fallacy, as a lot of offensive-minded top lines are worse defensively than checking 3rd/4th lines that Bennett faces. Yes, there are instances where you don't want Bennett being exposed as green, but again, his teammate quality has more influence on his success than his competition quality.

3) There's worse 3rd pairings in the league than Engelland and Jokipakka.

Empirically, there is exactly one worse pairing in the league, Bieksa-Theodore. A pairing with a 21 year old rookie dragging around a guy who was done in the league two years ago. They are still riding a flukey hot streak back in December, on any other team they would not be a pair.

People can't at the same time suggest we resign Engelland and then suggest he's no good when it's convenient.

Find me an instance of my suggested we re-sign Engelland.

No roster is going to have Norris candidates on its 3rd pair.

Being the empirically second-worst pairing in the NHL is a far cry from just "not Norris candidates".

Especially if a team drafted a 4th OA pick - chances are their roster sucks.

Our roster did suck at that time. And if Bennett didn't miss his rookie year to injury, he probably would have played with Hudler and Gaudreau that year, and might have been an instant star. The cause-and-effect of his injury that year meant when he did enter the NHL, it was a team that was to draft 15th overall, not 4th.

But other 4th OA picks still manage to become star players

My, what clairvoyance you possess.

[Flash Walken]

The concern for me is not the idea that Bennett won't be an NHL player, it's that he'll never be a dominant offensive player.

Wing, centre, 19 or 20, if he's going to be a point producer in the NHL he needs to be showing it by now. The fact that he has nearly 2 seasons of play where he's shown he isn't a point producer is troubling for future projections of him.

If you think Bennett could become a Backlund the next question becomes is a team with Monahan and Backlund (Bennett) as the top 2 centres good enough down the middle to be a contender. I don't think so. That doesn't mean you necessarily need to move him, but it does mean you need to re-calculate your team building blueprints to accommodate for planning to acquire a #2 centre.

I think if Bennett was showing offense, he'd get more offensive minutes, powerplay and otherwise, but he really isn't showing he's a top 6 offensive player on the Flames right now. He's putting up similar offensive numbers as Stajan and isn't a top 5 offensive forward for Calgary while a younger, rookie forward is.

Bennett might have a home on the Flames roster for the next 15 years as a key contributing bottom 6 centre, but I don't think we're ever going to see him be the top 6 point producer/goal scorer many expected when he was drafted.

[Erick Estrada]

Originally Posted by Flash Walken

The concern for me is not the idea that Bennett won't be an NHL player, it's that he'll never be a dominant offensive player.

Wing, centre, 19 or 20, if he's going to be a point producer in the NHL he needs to be showing it by now. The fact that he has nearly 2 seasons of play where he's shown he isn't a point producer is troubling for future projections of him.

If you think Bennett could become a Backlund the next question becomes is a team with Monahan and Backlund (Bennett) as the top 2 centres good enough down the middle to be a contender. I don't think so. That doesn't mean you necessarily need to move him, but it does mean you need to re-calculate your team building blueprints to accommodate for planning to acquire a #2 centre.

I think if Bennett was showing offense, he'd get more offensive minutes, powerplay and otherwise, but he really isn't showing he's a top 6 offensive player on the Flames right now. He's putting up similar offensive numbers as Stajan and isn't a top 5 offensive forward for Calgary while a younger, rookie forward is.

Bennett might have a home on the Flames roster for the next 15 years as a key contributing bottom 6 centre, but I don't think we're ever going to see him be the top 6 point producer/goal scorer many expected when he was drafted.

Outside of a couple of stints with a struggling Gaudreau he's played almost exclusively with replacement level wingers. Leon Draisaitl has only produced when he was paired with Hall or McDavid and when Hall struggled at the end of last season Leon saw his numbers nosedive as well. I think people are expecting too much of a 20 year old center that was always going to have to take some time to physically mature and hasn't had many opportunities to play with top 6 talent. It's not like Sam Reinhart is ripping up the league. I guess he's rounding into a bottom 6 center as well?

[Flash Walken]

double post

[Flash Walken]

Originally Posted by Erick Estrada

Outside of a couple of stints with a struggling Gaudreau he's played almost exclusively with replacement level wingers. Leon Draisaitl has only produced when he was paired with Hall or McDavid and when Hall struggled at the end of last season Leon saw his numbers nosedive as well. I think people are expecting too much of a 20 year old center that was always going to have to take some time to physically mature and hasn't had many opportunities to play with top 6 talent. It's not like Sam Reinhart is ripping up the league. I guess he's rounding into a bottom 6 center as well?

Sam Bennett has 20 points in 55 games this year.

Sam Reinhart has 33 points in 54 games this year.

Last year Reinhart had 42 points in 79 games.

Last year Bennett had 36 in 77.

So far in their young careers, Reinhart has produced 20 more points in basically the same amount of games playing for a garbage team in his own right. If Reinhart isn't tearing up the league, what's Bennett been doing?

[GoJetsGo]

Originally Posted by Flash Walken

Sam Bennett has 20 points in 55 games this year.

Sam Reinhart has 33 points in 54 games this year.

Last year Reinhart had 42 points in 79 games.

Last year Bennett had 36 in 77.

So far in their young careers, Reinhart has produced 20 more points in basically the same amount of games playing for a garbage team in his own right. If Reinhart isn't tearing up the league, what's Bennett been doing?

Bennett missed a vital year of development, and plays a game bigger than his current frame.

Development isn't linear, and isn't the same for each young player. Players and scenarios are all different.

You're completely devoid of context on this issue, and another example of how some fans have zero patience when it comes to young players.

[Gaskal]

Seems stupid to me to put this much weight into comparing Bennett with the other two centres, particularly when they're picked above him anyway

[FiveSeven]

Look, based on skill Bennett has the potential to become a 1/2 like centre.
If you can't see that you're blinded. Will he hit the height of his potential we don't know.

Simple as that.

Yeah he has struggled. Many young players have. Will he break through? Guess we will see, but a optimistic view on the situation is much more refreshing.

[Kovaz]

Originally Posted by Flash Walken

Sam Bennett has 20 points in 55 games this year.

Sam Reinhart has 33 points in 54 games this year.

Last year Reinhart had 42 points in 79 games.

Last year Bennett had 36 in 77.

So far in their young careers, Reinhart has produced 20 more points in basically the same amount of games playing for a garbage team in his own right. If Reinhart isn't tearing up the league, what's Bennett been doing?

Their 5v5 Points/60 are essentially identical over that period, as are PP Assists/60. The only difference has been Reinhart's higher goal-scoring on the powerplay. Reinhart's spent the majority of his PP time on either Eichel's or O'Reilly's wing (~650 of his ~750 PP minutes).

On top of that, Reinhart's been played pretty much exclusively on the first PP unit, and more importantly his linemates have been consistent, allowing him to develop chemistry. Over the last 2 seasons, here are his 5 most common PP lines:
Reinhart-O'Reilly-Eichel (174 minutes)
Reinhart-O'Reilly-Okposo (118 minutes)
Reinhart-Eichel-Okposo (93 minutes)
Reinhart-O'Reilly-Moulson (85 minutes)
Reinhart-O'Reilly-McGinn (85 minutes)

Now compare that with Bennett:
Gaudreau-Monahan-Bennett (32 minutes)
Bennett-Backlund-Ferland (30 minutes)
Tkachuk-Backlund-Bennett (28 minutes)
Bennett-Backlund-Colborne (19 minutes)
Bennett-Backlund-Hudler (10 minutes)

Reinhart's consistently playing huge minutes with top linemates on one of the best-coached PP units in the league (5th over the last 2 years). Bennett has never wound up on a stable unit over the last two years, and on a powerplay that's been much worse than Buffalo (17th over the last 2 years). Reinhart gets more opportunity because Buffalo doesn't have a Gaudreau or a Tkachuk for Reinhart to get stuck behind.

But that's beside the point: in a thread about Bennett's future as a centre, his scoring as a PP winger shouldn't be a primary criteria. His play 5v5 as a C is much more important, and he's only 2 points behind Gaudreau, and 5 points behind Tkachuk for the team lead.

[MarkGio]

People need to stop calling others impatient. Nobody is saying Bennett is a bust and will never be any good. Not one person said that. Just because Bennett is facing criticism, doesn't mean the critics took their ball and went home out of impatience.

Maybe we can be critical AND patiently wait for him to prove his critics wrong.

[MarkGio]

Originally Posted by GranteedEV

Not really. Most PP units face the same penalty killers more-or-less. Also he isn't on #2PP, Frolik is. But apparently this means he isn't a centre.



If a team offers Patrick Sieloff to us for Sam Bennett, you take Sieloff? Because that is what we paid for Chiasson, for a reason. And he has been a solid 10th-best forward for us, but that's all he's been. Expecting Bennett to produce like a top 6 guy while being attached to the hip to our 10th-best forward is a fallacy.

And outside of power play scoring as a garbage man on stacked units, Brouwer has never had any 5-on-5 NHL success. Up until last year's single run, he was one of the worst playoff performers in the league too. At present he has the worst shot metric stats among regular forwards on the team, which is par for the course for him.



Which roster has top 6 production out of its 3rd line center who gets 4th line ice time?



Chicken-and-Egg. Bennett didn't struggle until he was taken off the top lines.



Keep him at center and replace Chiasson with Ferland, and stop playing him primarily with the Jokipakka-Engelland pairing. Kulak-Engelland exists and has been undeniably better. Lastly the Backlund line should carry the third pair. Good sheltering is about balance of linemates, not about aggressive line matching. Get him back on PP2, as he needs the confidence boost more than Frolik.



Actually, I don't think Bennett needs sheltering in the sense of facing other teams' worst players. Even if he were facing Toews and co on a nightly basis, I wouldn't be worried if he had quality on-ice teammates like Gio. But it doesn't really matter what I think, as I am not the one panicking about him.



Up until, like, three games ago during Monahan's hot streak, Bennett was outproducing our "number one center" 5-on-5. He is still outproducing Stajan. And competition quality is a bit of a fallacy, as a lot of offensive-minded top lines are worse defensively than checking 3rd/4th lines that Bennett faces. Yes, there are instances where you don't want Bennett being exposed as green, but again, his teammate quality has more influence on his success than his competition quality.



Empirically, there is exactly one worse pairing in the league, Bieksa-Theodore. A pairing with a 21 year old rookie dragging around a guy who was done in the league two years ago. They are still riding a flukey hot streak back in December, on any other team they would not be a pair.



Find me an instance of my suggested we re-sign Engelland.



Being the empirically second-worst pairing in the NHL is a far cry from just "not Norris candidates".



Our roster did suck at that time. And if Bennett didn't miss his rookie year to injury, he probably would have played with Hudler and Gaudreau that year, and might have been an instant star. The cause-and-effect of his injury that year meant when he did enter the NHL, it was a team that was to draft 15th overall, not 4th.



My, what clairvoyance you possess.

So what, Bennett is only going to produce if he's Gaudreau's and Hamilton's passenger on the top line? That's your argument? Because I would hope he could be a driver of offense against 3rd line scrubs, regardless who he's playing with. You don't want your 4th OA pick being a Cheechoo who only produces when playing with Thorton, you want him to be THE Thorton who's taking guys like Cheechoo and turning them into producers. You want him to be a driver, especially with high offensive zone starts and against weak competition.

The only fallacy here is that you believe Bennett is not responsible AT ALL for his underwhelming production and instead it's only because he's "attached to the hip" of 4 other anchors that he's underperforming. Maybe Bennett gets the worse linemates BECAUSE he's not performing well and NOT deserving of the best guys on the team. Seriously, 31% of his ice time this year has been beside Gaudreau, our star forward and best playmaker, and yet Bennett's only able to muster up 10 goals and 10 assists?

[Textcritic]

Originally Posted by MarkGio

People need to stop calling others impatient. Nobody is saying Bennett is a bust and will never be any good. Not one person said that. Just because Bennett is facing criticism, doesn't mean the critics took their ball and went home out of impatience...

Did you read Da Chief's posts?

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by Cleveland Steam Whistle

What makes you question his hockey IQ? The offensive zone penalties?

• Inability to read the play and use time and space to his advantage.
  
• Inability to use his teammates.
  
• Repeated efforts to beat NHL defenders 1 on 1.
  
• Coughing up the puck on low percentage plays.

Basically, playing with tunnel-vision and impatience. The impatience will likely go away. Not so sure about the tunnel-vision. Some guys (ie Phaneuf) just never develop hockey awareness and IQ beyond what they enter the NHL with. Some guys have it right at the outset. Look at Tkachuk - reads plays like a pro.

[TheScorpion]

What I've taken from this thread: the Flames should have selected Sam Reinhart with the fourth overall pick. Oh, don't ask me how they could have convinced Buffalo to take Bennett. They just should have. Because our Sam is a bust at age 20 who will definitely never pan out.

[Flash Walken]

Originally Posted by TheScorpion

What I've taken from this thread: the Flames should have selected Sam Reinhart with the fourth overall pick. Oh, don't ask me how they could have convinced Buffalo to take Bennett. They just should have. Because our Sam is a bust at age 20 who will definitely never pan out.

You're going to need to work on that reading comprehension if you want to graduate highschool.