There's also the fact that there are different expectations for different players. The expectation is that rookies are going to make mistakes and for years, we've wanted coaches to let them work through those mistakes and not bench them every time they do something wrong. Pionk and Howden were both rookies, yet people wanted them benched for making mistakes. Okay. A player like Buchnevich has been in the league longer and has higher expectations placed upon him. The coaching staff knew he could be better and pushed him to reach that level. A guy like Staal? There's nowhere for him to go. He is what he is. Benching him isn't going to make him a better player. He doesn't provide a lot, but he doesn't make a lot of mistakes either, and he always gives a consistent effort.
And it needs to be pointed out too that there are only so many seats on the bench. Maybe there are 5 players who deserve it, but you've still got to ice a team, so you bench the one or two that you feel will respond to it the best. And as GeorgeKaplan said, we don't have all of the information. We don't know what's going on in practice. We don't know what Quinn is seeing in video that we aren't seeing in the game. We don't know what Quinn is asking of each player and how they are responding to it.
There isn't a coach in the NHL, past or present, who is going to hold players accountable in the same way the fans expect him to. The coach is going to have different priorities than we do and he's going to have information that we don't have.
You can complain about which players get benched and which don't, which ones deserve it more than others, but at the end of the day it's about the coach getting the most out of his players. Can anyone honestly say that Quinn didn't get this team to play above its abilities most nights? Can anyone say that both Buchnevich and ADA, players who received the most tough love, didn't benefit from the way Quinn handled them?
Let the man do his job and stop second guessing every decision he makes.