Sam Bennett Value: Have the Flames held on TOO long? OR is he awesome?

[GioforPM]

Originally Posted by GordonBlue

lucic is just a boat anchor though. doesn't change your point in any way, but he sucks.

Yeah, calling Lucic "quality" because of his pre-Oiler years = calling Brouwer "quality" (or Jagr for that matter).

[pepper24]

Originally Posted by Bingo

An update to an article I wrote a couple of years ago.

Time with quality linemates in the last three seasons.

Bennett 41%
Draisaitl 83%

And if I change Lucic's status to "quality linemate"

Draisaitl 91%

Breaking: good players play with good line mates. Earned not given.

[SuperMatt18]

Originally Posted by GioforPM

Yeah, calling Lucic "quality" because of his pre-Oiler years = calling Brouwer "quality" (or Jagr for that matter).

But at the same time Lucic's 34 points last season in the worst year of his career, are in line with Brouwer's career average of 36 before coming to Calgary.

So even bad Lucic is a lot better than bad Troy Brouwer.

[GioforPM]

Originally Posted by SuperMatt18

But at the same time Lucic's 34 points last season in the worst year of his career, are in line with Brouwer's career average of 36 before coming to Calgary.

So even bad Lucic is a lot better than bad Troy Brouwer.

Last season Lucic played with McDavid. I suspect even Brouwer would get a few on that line. I might have a shot at 34 points.

I agree that Lucic has had the far superior career, but your Brouwer averages might be skewed a bit since they include a 47 game season (in which he got 33) and a couple injury shortened and early career ones where he played a lot fewer games. The four years before Calgary were pretty solid points-wise.

[Vinny01]

Originally Posted by GioforPM

Yeah, I was mostly thinking of Stajan - I couldn't recall Bennett ever spending significant time with him. I knew that he had Brouwer for a good part of two seasons ago. He was also playing C that year, FWIW.

Bennett has played pretty much his whole time on the third line other than his time with Backlund. That includes this year. It's just that the third line has better quality than before.

Agreed. Bennett’s best year was his second where he had 2nd line minutes playing with Backlund and Frolik.

I really like him paired with Neal and having either Dube, Backlund, or Jankowski as their Centre. I am really optimistic with Bennett based on the last few games.

[ComixZone]

Originally Posted by pepper24

Breaking: good players play with good line mates. Earned not given.

Breaking: good teams don't have bad players.

Not Sam Bennett's fault that we had an idiotic coach who put two lines together and kept them together despite the team constantly failing while non-NHL quality players hampered the development of young players further down the line-up.

[Bingo]

Originally Posted by pepper24

Breaking: good players play with good line mates. Earned not given.

Breaking: People that have their mind made up on something don't want to see information that may mess with the concrete as it sets

[Bingo]

Originally Posted by GioforPM

Last season Lucic played with McDavid. I suspect even Brouwer would get a few on that line. I might have a shot at 34 points.

I agree that Lucic has had the far superior career, but your Brouwer averages might be skewed a bit since they include a 47 game season (in which he got 33) and a couple injury shortened and early career ones where he played a lot fewer games. The four years before Calgary were pretty solid points-wise.

This is getting more attention than it deserves since I didn't include Lucic in the first comparison.

[pepper24]

Originally Posted by Bingo

Breaking: People that have their mind made up on something don't want to see information that may mess with the concrete as it sets

Huh?

[Bingo]

Originally Posted by pepper24

Huh?

What part do you need help with?

[pepper24]

Originally Posted by ComixZone

Breaking: good teams don't have bad players.

Not Sam Bennett's fault that we had an idiotic coach who put two lines together and kept them together despite the team constantly failing while non-NHL quality players hampered the development of young players further down the line-up.

Oilers have tons of bad player. draisital is too good to play with them. Bennett is not as good and 3rd line player and therefore won’t get as quality linemates. Bad player comparison.

[Bingo]

Originally Posted by pepper24

Oilers have tons of bad player. draisital is too good to play with them. Bennett is not as good and 3rd line player and therefore won’t get as quality linemates. Bad player comparison.

They were drafted back to back which makes them an inevitable comparison for life.

One has been given choice linemates from the beginning.
The other has had to scratch and claw for every inch.

[Vansmack]

I see 80 points being used as a measuring stick. Over the past 5 years, the league averages 9 players per season with 80+ points. Last year saw a huge jump with 20 players reaching this mark. Realistically, a team may have 1 player with 80 + points.

In the last 5 years there have been 20, 7, 5, 5, 7 players reach this mark.

[pepper24]

Originally Posted by Bingo

They were drafted back to back which makes them an inevitable comparison for life.

One has been given choice linemates from the beginning.
The other has had to scratch and claw for every inch.

That’s only comparison. Draisital is top line player and borderline superstar. Bennett is playing better so far this season but 3rd line player. Top line players get better linemates than 3rd line players. Bad player comparison.

[Bingo]

Originally Posted by pepper24

That’s only comparison. Draisital is top line player and borderline superstar. Bennett is playing better so far this season but 3rd line player. Top line players get better linemates than 3rd line players. Bad player comparison.

According to you ... I get it.

But I'm going to keep it as interesting if you don't mind.

Drafted 3,4 and how they develop since is a pretty interesting thing to dig into given the two different paths the teams took.

Would Draisaitl be a borderline superstar without a rookie season with Taylor Hall, and then playing wing to the league's best player?

Would Bennett be the enigma he's been if he stayed with Backlund and Frolik for three years because Calgary didn't have Tkachuk?

At the end of the day no one can argue Draisaitl isn't better, but it's a deeper look than counting stats.

[Bonded]

It was undisciplined but I liked Bennett's run at Zadorov on Saturday.

[burn_this_city]

https://theathletic.com/590303/2018/...top-nine-role/

Darren Haynes with a great article about Bennett today in the Athletic.

[united]

Originally Posted by Bingo

An update to an article I wrote a couple of years ago.

Time with quality linemates in the last three seasons.

Bennett 41%
Draisaitl 83%

And if I change Lucic's status to "quality linemate"

Draisaitl 91%

What is their time against quality opposition in the last three seasons? Full context is important.

[Bingo]

Originally Posted by united

What is their time against quality opposition in the last three seasons? Full context is important.

Pretty tight.

Bennett has averaged 28.6% of his time against quality opposition, Draisiatl 29.5% of his time.

Their CF% against quality is tight as well, Bennett 49.8% and Draisaitl 50.1%

[Kovaz]

It's a chicken and egg situation.

• A. Bennett didn't score a whole lot because he didn't get to play with very good linemates.
• B. Bennett didn't get to play with very good linemates because he didn't score a whole lot.

The reality is both are factors, and it's pretty clearly pushing a narrative to ignore one and attribute Bennett's results entirely to the other.

That said, I'd like to illustrate how hard it is to put up good offensive numbers from a depth role. Not all ice time is created equally, so comparing goal/point totals straight across is rarely a fair comparison. So I'm going to look at a best-case scenario: suppose Bennett produces exactly like Gaudreau.

Factor #1: ice time. When you play less, you'll put up fewer points. So if we take Gaudreau's scoring rates and apply them to Bennett's ice time, here's what we get. I'm going to use Backlund instead for PK rates since Gaudreau doesn't kill penalties, and that will inflate the totals a bit to give a true "best case hypothetical":

5v5: 48 points -> 40 points
5v4: 21 points -> 8 points
5v3: 2 points -> 0 points
4v4: 2 points -> 1 point
3v3: 3 points -> 0 points
4v5: 3 points -> 1 point (Backlund)
3v5: 0 points -> 0 points (Backlund)

So this hypothetical player who scores like the best of Gaudreau and Backlund merged into one, but is deployed like a 3rd liner for some reason, finishes the season with 50 points. If we only recognized his greatness and deployed him like the true all star he is, he'd have scored 79 points instead. (Corsica is missing a few of Gaudreau's points somewhere). So just from reduced ice time, this player loses 29 points.

Factor #2: linemates. Playing with better players will get you more points for the same quality of player. Gaudreau spent about 75% of his ice time with Sean Monahan last year, and their lines scored at a rate of 3.5 GF/60. In the other 25%, Gaudreau's lines scored at a rate of 2.43 GF/60. That's with a pretty even distribution across our bottom 6 players that year: Bennett, Jankowski, Lazar, Hathaway, Stajan, Brouwer all make appearances, as well as a bit of time with Backlund and Frolik. If we apply that to our above total of 40 5v5 points, it gets further reduced to 27 points. So there's another 13 points just due to linemates at 5v5, bringing the total down from 50 points to 37.

I think it'd be totally unreasonable to expect Bennett to be better than Gaudreau. And yet, in order to crack 40 points, there's a strong case to be made he would have had to be. This isn't meant to totally absolve Bennett of any blame. But I do think we need to have our expectations in check. It's really, really difficult to score like a top-6 player without top-6 minutes or significant PP time.