AILMENTS HURT BENSON’S NHL DRAFT STOCK
Vancouver Giants winger will still likely get drafted in first two rounds
Tyler Benson averaged five points a game in bantam AAA with Edmonton’s Southside Athletic Club — shattering Ty Rattie’s long-standing Alberta record for points in a single season — and rode that to become the No. 1 selection in the 2013 WHL bantam draft.
At the time, his game was punctuated with an exclamation point.
Now the local boy comes with a question mark heading into the June NHL draft.
Once a Top 10 to 15 pick in the first round on most scouting lists, the Vancouver Giants winger is now an early second-rounder because he was hurt twice this past season.
Both ailments were freak things: a cyst on his tailbone that required surgery, then osteitis pubis, the same malady that hit Oilers defenceman Kevin Lowe in 1987 as well as one-time Oilers forward Marc Pouliot several years back.
Benson played in just 30 WHL games and missed the NHL Prospects showcase in Vancouver.
The scouts forget about him. Suddenly, Benson — who had 28 points in those 30 games — is a talent but with a “yeah, but” attached to him.
He’s like Petr Sykora back in 1995, who fell all the way to No. 18 to New Jersey because he had a bad shoulder while playing in the IHL for the Detroit Vipers. Sykora was supposed to go as high as No. 6. He went on to play 1,017 NHL games, so plenty of teams got burned in that draft.
Of more recent vintage, he’s akin to Brandon Saad, a surefire first-rounder from Saginaw who tumbled into the second-round (No. 43) in 2011, fortuitously to the Chicago Blackhawks. While Saad did play 59 games in his draft year, his 55 points were pedestrian.
There’s nothing pedestrian about his NHL game, though. Two Stanley Cup rings in Chicago.
Even if the six-foot, 201-pound Benson hadn’t been hurt, maybe scouts would have started picking away at him because he was so good, so young.
The scouts began to wonder about his skating stride a bit (something he concurs with, saying he has to get a little faster), but he’s very competitive and smart. He’s a terrific passer, more playmaker than shooter, at least for now.
“It’s hard to judge (what the scouts were grading). I didn’t play many games, and even when I did, I was injured,” Benson said. “I can’t recall a game in which I played when I was healthy this year. It was harder for them to base (reports) on my performance.
“I’m not too worried where I go anymore.”
Craig Button, TSN’s director of scouting and a former NHL GM, says Benson fits in the 21 to 40 range. The injuries to Benson can’t be sloughed off.
“It’s a cautionary tale how you evaluate him. When a player’s hurt, you watch other players improve and get better ... the scouting process wants to see progression or not,” Button said. “In Tyler’s case, you’re wondering if he’s progressed or not, whereas you have a continuum with other players.
“His injuries didn’t help him but he’s not trying to be this dynamic offensive player any longer. Tyler has adjusted to that and he’s such a smart player. His pace of play might prevent him from being in the upper echelon of players, but he’ll find a way to play in the NHL because he knows his game.”
SHORT SHIFTS
Ken Hitchcock has been working on one-year contracts in St. Louis, and I’m sure there will be a banging of the drums again for a different voice behind the Blues bench. This season’s Blues team, however, beat the defending Stanley Cup champs and another in Dallas that boasted the second-best record in the NHL. Can’t imagine a better coaching job by Hitch and his good group — Kirk Muller, Brad Shaw and goalie instructor Jim Corsi. Hitchcock, who feels he works best on one-year deals ($1.2 million this past year) was on the hot seat going into the season, but he shouldn’t be now. He had his team two games away from the Stanley Cup final. The Blues ran out of gas after 20 playoff games and were defeated by a better, faster San Jose Sharks team. The Blues’ best defenceman, Alex Pietrangelo, looked worn out against the Sharks. I’m hearing Alex Steen’s shoulder was a mess, too, which didn’t help. Is there a white knight head coaching candidate out there for the Blues? I don’t think so.
I’d add righties Brent Burns and Pietrangelo — even if he struggled in the Sharks series because he was awesome the first two rounds then ran out of gas — and left-shooter Mark Giordano on the back end for Canada’s World Cup team. Up front, I’d add Logan Couture (a slam dunk off his playoff), Taylor Hall, Matt Duchene and Corey Perry. Brad Marchand is on the bubble because the team could use a disturber. Duchene and Perry have a leg up as they played on the 2014 Sochi Olympic team, and Hall was very good at the worlds, while Couture has been one of the four or five best forwards in the playoffs.
The Young Guns team needs seven additions, too. To me, Calder Trophy finalist Shayne Gostisbehere and 6-foot-6 Colton Parayko are automatics on the back end with Dougie Hamilton, not Jake Trouba, as the other one back there. Justin Faulk is too old for the under-24 team. Up front, Auston Matthews is a given after the worlds, even if he’s only 18. Ryan Nugent-Hopkins can be the No. 3 centre based on his NHL resume, but him missing the worlds because he was recuperating from an injury didn’t help his cause. Plus the competition is stiff. I’d go with Mark Scheifele, the fiery Robby Fabbri and Jonathan Drouin as other forwards, with Alex Galchenyuk and Boone Jenner also in the mix.
Chris Phillips was a class act through close to 20 NHL seasons in Ottawa. He was a very good player for a long time and did tons of the heavy lifting on the Senators’ back end for years. Eventually, though, your body wears out.
Would a Derek Stepan-forJonas Brodin trade, centre for defenceman, make sense? The Wild need a centre, the Rangers a young defender. Stepan is good and young (25) but overpaid at $6.5 million per season; Brodin is perfectly placed at $4.2 million per, a left-shooting defender who likes to play the right side.
Will the Arizona Coyotes offer Shane Doan, who turns 40 Oct. 10, the same sort of one-year contract Jaromir Jagr got in Florida? Maybe. Jagr is getting a one-year, $4-million salary and the good possibility of another $1.5 million in bonuses for games played and points.
Toronto Maple Leafs draft pick Mitch Marner is Johnny Gaudreau small, but the puck is always on the right-winger’s stick. He’s a very generous 164 pounds and looks about 155. Marner’s the best player in junior hockey (13
When a player’s hurt, you watch other players improve and get better ... the scouting process wants to see progression or not.
points in three Memorial Cup games, a great passer) and won’t benefit from another junior in London, but is he good enough to be an NHL regular? Undoubtedly, he’ll be on Matthews’ right-side when the Leafs convene for camp.
With the Penguins going back to Matt Murray in net after Marc-Andre Fleury’s one-game look, how uncomfortable is that going to be next season? Can Pittsburgh stick with this in net, or do they have to investigate trades for Fleury over the summer with the expansion draft coming back for Las Vegas? They don’t want to lose Fleury for nothing, and Murray would have to be protected. They have no first-round pick (Toronto has theirs for Phil Kessel). So what about going to Carolina, which has two firstrounders, for one of them (13 or 21) and, say, goalie Eddie Lack? Or to Calgary, which has three second-rounders and would like to move D-man Dennis Wideman’s salary?
The Panthers wanted to retrieve some draft picks, but dealing top-four defenceman Erik Gudbranson, who makes a very manageable $3.5 million, for Vancouver centre Jared McCann is a bit of a head-scratcher, especially because they’re likely losing defenceman Brian Campbell to free-agency and Willie Mitchell is retiring because of concussions. Gudbranson has never been as good as his No. 3 overall draft status in 2010 behind Hall and Tyler Seguin, but he’s a solid, tough and defensive blueliner. They do have Alex Petrovic to move up on the depth chart and Boston College’s Ian McCoshen coming, though. McCann is a natural centre, but he’ll have to play wing in Florida because they already have Sasha Barkov, Nick Bjugstad and Vincent Trocheck up the middle.
Why didn’t Florida sign Finnish winger Joonas Donskoi after they took him in the fourth round in 2010, when he played on a very good world under-18 line with Mikael Granlund? Money more than anything. They were tight with it. He was assistant captain of Finland’s 2012 world under-20 team and was very good in the Finnish Elite League but wasn’t signed, went back into the draft in 2012 and still nobody took him. His skating wasn’t what it is now, but lots of scouts missed the boat, including those with the Sharks, who waited until 2015 to sign him. He’s a top-six player on a team in the Cup final at age 23.
Count the Coyotes in the mix for second-pairing free-agent defencemen with Michael Stone out until December after major knee surgery. Either that or they trade one of their young forwards to, say, Anaheim for Sami Vatanen. The Coyotes have two excellent young junior centres in Dylan Strome and Marner’s London pivot Christian Dvorak, both of whom were very good in camp last year, but there’s word big Martin Hanzal might be available. He’s got one year left at $3.1 mil, then he’s UFA.
Kris Knoblauch, Connor McDavid’s junior coach in Erie, should be a hot item to coach an AHL farm club. However, he has a young family and he might prefer the security of a long-term (say, five years) contract with the OHL Otters over a shorter deal to run an AHL bench.
The WHL’s Edmonton Oil Kings, who lost No. 1 goalie Alec Dillon to hip surgery this season, might have the L.A. Kings’ draft pick back as a 20-year-old to go with the underrated Patrick Dea. Dillon was a big off-season addition last spring, but wear and tear necessitated the surgery.