No, he's just not been good as a C.
Geoff Ward on Bennett last night..
At the beginning of the season, and what a lot of people don’t know, I basically gave Sam the choice of where he wanted to play. He wanted to start at centre and so we started him at centre, and he came in after a couple of games and said, ‘Hey, I think I may want to take the other option,’ which was playing on the wing. We gave him a choice to play in two different positions at the start of the year. So before anybody jumps all over that as to reasons why he may be unhappy, let’s just quell that right now.
He's going to be a winger from here on... that's just the reality of it.
Flames' fan just chiming in with my two cents. I will start this off by "I do NOT want Bennett traded".
This is Bennett to Flames' fans:
Bennett just really needs a chance. He can still be a very effective player with more offence out of him if given proper linemates.
Bennett is a bust.
He is a polarizing player, without question. However, every single playoff game he is in makes people adore him. He goes balls to the wall. Whistles get put away a bit more, and he ends up taking less penalties. The amount of penalties he takes is a bit overblown IMO - players that play physical are just going to get those called on them now and then. Has he taken a few bad penalties? Absolutely he has, but not at the rate that people assume.
I directly quoted you here in particular because I was perusing this thread to see what you guys thought, and I see a lot of 'Sam Bennett is not a centre'.
When he came into the league, he definitely didn't play as a centre - Bob Hartley got him alongside Backlund, and he did really well (scored more goals than Monahan's rookie year - future is looking awesome with this kid!) Gulutzan then came along and the Flames suddenly switched to 'win now' mode. Gulutzan was terrible at development, and the Flames had just signed Brouwer. Bennett got stapled to Brouwer. Then he got stapled to Neal. He got stapled to a bunch of players that only McDavid can get them to score.
Bennett has about ZERO confidence right now. Whether you are a Calgary fan who hates him, or a fan that loves him, it is easy to see that he suffers from a lack of confidence. After the playoffs, Treliving, Ward and even Conroy were talking about how good of a centre Bennett is, and how 'next season' he will be the third line centre with decent linemates, and then see where they go. However, as the season neared, the Flames decided to push Lindholm into the C spot, so now the Flames have Monahan, Lindholm and Backlund.
Bennett will displace Backlund in the future, but not for this year, and probably not next. Backlund is a little unheralded, but he is an excellent defensive centre who still produces at a 2nd line clip every season. Struggles out of the gate for some reason every single year, but he eventually settles into being just a completely awesome 2-way centre that takes all the tough minutes and is seeing 65% defensive zone starts.
Lindholm is playing well with Tkachuk, so the Flames now are trying to run 2 scoring lines. He isn't going to displace Lindholm who is also good defensively and offensively. Monahan and Gaudreau - yeah, they aren't going to split those two up.
The organization promised a centre position - they talked it up quite a lot. Bennett really earned it with his play in the playoffs. You really have to hate Bennett after watching that and not think that he can't be an effective centre. He just needs the rope. Flames can't give him that rope right now with the centres ahead of him, and with 2 years of Gaudreau and Tkachuk left on their 'bargain' contracts, and 3 with Monahan - it makes it tough to break him into the lineup at centre without him actually pushing anyone out - and he needs a lot of rope to do so. Not going to happen.
However, he is MORE effective as a centre than a forward. He seems to see the ice better, and he is decent defensively as well. Gets into the coach's doghouse sometimes for taking offensive zone penalties because he is over-aggressive, but there have also been absolutely silly calls against him (IIRC, one player actually dodged to avoid Bennett's hit, so Bennett didn't even touch him, but lost his footing and Bennett got a tripping call in the offensive zone anyway - like really???). Stuff like that happens, but he definitely DOES take the occasional offensive zone penalty sometimes which is annoying.
Oh, and he is sneaky tough. He can hang with guys who are bigger and stronger than him. He rocked Nurse last season with a big open-ice hit, and of course Nurse gets all angry and tries to fight Bennett, refs didn't break it up, so Bennett fought Nurse, and surprisingly, didn't look out of place. The Bennett-Trouba fight was one to look up.
Either way, here is last season's highlight package = regular season + playoffs. He is polarizing - some people feel he is what he is, some people feel that he can be a much better producer (though most do not think he can put up 1st line numbers - I personally think he can put up very respectable middle 6 numbers, and everything else that comes with that makes him more valuable IMO). I know that the Flames don't want to trade him, and I doubt that he does get traded. He apparently didn't request a trade - the team did not receive a trade request, but Bennett hasn't been happy with his deployment to date. Still, I almost want to see him traded just to see how he develops (or not) somewhere else.
