CENTRE OF ATTENTION
Flames envision Bennett in pivot spot
It’s the only debate you hear more often around the Saddledome than popcorn versus nachos.
Is Sam Bennett best suited for centre or the wing?
Among the masses, many figure that Bennett — the highest draft pick in Calgary Flames franchise history, a spring surprise in the 2015 Stanley Cup playoffs and now a snake-bitten sophomore — has delivered his best work during stretches of deployment on the left side.
The decision-makers, however, remain committed to developing No. 93 as a middle man.
“I don’t have a preference,” Bennett insisted prior to the Flames’ bye. “I’m comfortable in both positions and I can play both positions. It doesn’t really matter to me. I don’t know if I am a better centre or better winger.”
The 20-year-old might be the only yahoo in Cowtown without an opinion on that particular subject.
Bennett patrolled the port side for about two-thirds of his freshman campaign before being shifted to centre last February. With the exception of a stint on the wing while star lefty Johnny Gaudreau recovered from a broken finger, he’s been skating at the pivotal position ever since.
That’s where the Flames envision him for the next decade and then some. This is still the downpayment period and it ain’t always cheap.
“It’s much more difficult to play centre than it is the wing, with the responsibilities that go along with the position on both sides,” stressed Flames general manager Brad Treliving, who called Bennett’s name with the fourth-overall selection in 2014. “I don’t care which team you play for or which system or anything like that, but especially in how we play and the responsibilities to be down low, it’s a taxing position.”
Which explains why Bennett, early in his big-league career, has often looked better as a flank.
“Do I think young players that are centremen like Sam, are they more effective at wing early on in the NHL? Yeah, I do, if you can get a good veteran presence with them,” said Flames head coach Glen Gulutzan. “But if you put them in the right spot, they can develop their skill set at centre, too. So it’s a little bit of a balancing act with a young player.
“It’s a lot harder to develop a winger and then say, ‘Oh, by the way, we need you to play 40 games at centre.’ It’s like the pickle and the cucumber, right? You can turn a cucumber into a pickle, but once you’ve got a pickle, you can’t make it into a cucumber.
“Right now, he’s finding his way. If we have to put him on the wing at some time, we would, but we’re trying to develop him. He’s going to be a good two-way centre. He is already. He’s been able to hold his own both ways, so I’d rather be able to move a centre to wing at some point than try to make him a winger and then move him back to the centre position.”
Of course, you don’t want to spoil the cucumber either.
“It’s all about slotting,” Gulutzan said. “If you slot him up into the first-line hole and say, ‘OK, you’ve got Joe Thornton tonight, you’ve got (Ryan) Getzlaf tomorrow, you’ve got (Anze) Kopitar the next night and then you’re going to come back against (Jonathan) Toews,’ well there could be some regression there because he’s a young guy playing against established, top-of-their-class players.
“But if you slot him in the right place, you can develop in the right areas so that eventually — and I believe this — he’ll be able to play against top guys night in and night out. But there are not too many 20-year-olds yet that can.”
Truth is, not many 20-year-olds are playing centre, period, in the NHL, although there is a kid in Edmonton — the guy who wears No. 97 on his sweater and is currently tied for tops in the scoring race — making it look way too easy.
“You can go back in history and study how difficult it is for guys to come in at young ages and have a whole lot of success right off the bat. It’s a short list,” Treliving said. “So we’re being real patient with (Bennett). We think the world of him. And he’s shown it at times over the course of the last couple of years — he gives you a glimpse of what he can be.
“But he’s a young man playing in a hard league and at a difficult position. So I think we all have to take a deep breath here. You have to invest in it. It’s not going to happen just because you hope it happens. There has to be a period of investment. There has to be a period of patience.
“We want them to be 26 years old and perfect right away. That’s not how it works.”
Bennett is certainly experiencing some growing pains.
Between Dec. 4 to Feb. 1, he spanned more than eight weeks — a stretch of 23 appearances and one healthy scratch — without collecting a single assist. When you consider how often a centre touches the puck, that’s hard to fathom.
He has just one marker in 16 games since the calendar was flipped to 2017 and that was a meaningless lamp-lighting with 1.1 seconds left on the clock in a lopsided loss to the Montreal Canadiens.
All told, Bennett has 10 goals and 10 assists in 55 contests as a sophomore. He had 18 of each last winter, with the majority of that production coming off the left wing.