Sometimes it’s easier to not have a choice.
The Edmonton Oilers have had to wonder when gazing back on draft history if they selected the right player time and time again. The book is in on Nail Yakupov, but additional questions swarmed the choices of Taylor Hall (Tyler Seguin) and Ryan Nugent Hopkins (Gabe Landeskog). That first overall choice gives you the field, but with that comes a lot of post draft analysis and navel gazing.
When The Hockey News went to select their cover for the 2014 NHL Draft they couldn’t decide on just one player, instead they put four on the cover, and as it turns out that’s exactly the four that went as expected in the top four picks.
The Flames, with the fourth pick, took the last guy standing, that being the somewhat controversial Sam Bennett, a player who has struggled in his sophomore season after a pretty good rookie season, and a playoff showing before that that looked very promising.
The Oilers, who sat third in the draft had the choice between Leon Draisaitl and Sam Bennett, and at this moment in time only a fool would call that a bad choice, as the German center has become a huge part of their core and has passed the previous core players like Nugent Hopkins and Jordan Eberle, in terms of importance.
The results are still early though, not as early as any proclamations from Calgary that Matthew Tkachuk is the better player over Jesse Puljujärvi, but early nonetheless.
But why with the Flames only 9 games and 3 weeks from returning to the playoffs would I be writing a draft article?
Naturally, the suspension to Matthew Tkachuk.
An Opportunity Opens …
With Tkachuk munching popcorn from high above at the Verizon Center last night, Sam Bennett took his spot on the now mangled 3M line along with center Mikael Backlund, and winger Michael Frolik.
The Euro pairing have been tonic for any additional winger they’ve touched over the course of the past two seasons hurting two different NHL teams by helping marginal forwards to larger than needed contracts in the process (Joe Colborne, Lance Bouma helped by Backlund alone).
Putting Bennett with the air tight duo was a very interesting experiment as it places the “listing” 20 year old in place of the “can do nothing wrong” 19 year old in the midst of the same season. The result? A loss, which can’t be overlooked, but another huge possession night for the trio, with Bennett leading the way.
In 13 minutes of ice time Sam Bennett had a corsi split of 66.67%, and 11-7 shots advantage, a 8-5 scoring chance lead, and a 4-0 event lead in high danger corsi events. Essentially he plugged the whole, though I’m not sure I’m ready to suggest he plugged it to the same degree that Matthew Tkachuk has shown over the past few months.
What it did however, was lead me down a path to examine minutes played at the NHL level with impact players.
Here’s where things get subjective, at least unintentionally. In order to come up with a split in time between playing with good players and playing with duds, a measure of some sort has to be run against three different rosters. Who is an impact player? Who isn’t? Do you go by dollars? Icetime? Name? Production this year? It’s a tough task.
For full disclosure I’ll include my lists for Edmonton, Calgary and Buffalo that went into ice time splits for each of the 2014 Draft forwards in terms of time with two impact players, one impact player, and essentially being on their own.
Some of the obvious things that jump out in the table above;
- Sam Bennett has played 650 minutes less than Leon Draisaitl and 300 minutes less than Sam Reinhart. That amounts to roughly a half season in comparison to the Edmonton player based on 15 minutes a night, and closer to 50 games if you take into account Sam Bennett’s career average ice time.
- Sam Bennett has spent 55% of his time in the NHL playing with less than impact players. He’s young himself so it’s unfair to veteran NHLers to suggest he’s been on his own, but the fact remains, his time with Calgary impact players has been limited.
- Leon Draisaitl has only played 18% of his time on his own, and 82% of the time he’s had someone to play pitch and catch with including one of the best players in the world for the bulk of this season.
- Sam Reinhart has had an even greater advantage as he’s been alone only 9% of the time and has spent 40% of the time with two impact players, a huge leg up.
- It can’t be ignored that Bennett has been crushed when he’s had limited linemates as his goal differential and possession numbers are far worse than that of his draft counterparts.
As I said however, this summary is worthless without the “list” showing how decisions were made as to impact players.
From the Flames perspective, Bennet had to have one of the big four on his line in order to get nod for playing with impact players. Sean Monahan and Johnny Gaudreau make up 2/3 of the top line and are essentially the face of the franchise. Mikael Backlund is the heart and soul of the team and an easy inclusion. If there’s a player with any real debate on the team it would be Michael Frolik who I included as impact and Troy Brouwer who I didn’t despite being a recent free agent signing and having a big ticket. Trust me, you’ll see below that decision isn’t cherry picking when you look at the other two clubs.
The Oilers are a much tougher case to split as they have players moving in all kinds of directions. Taylor Hall was an impact player before being moved on, and Connor McDavid is the man in Edmonton; they are easy picks. But then you have a mess. Ryan Nugent Hopkins and Jordan Eberle have been passed by in the organization but they still hold impact positions within the forward group, and production to go with it. Patrick Maroon is holding down a top three spot on the team but he’s only ever done it once, and he’s playing with McDavid so I excluded him. Milan Lucic is the extreme example of the Brouwer ruling above as he’s being paid to be impact but isn’t. And Nail Yakupov never was.
Buffalo has four obvious choices in Evander Kane, Jack Eichel, Ryan O’Reilly and Kyle Okposo. I excluded Tyler Ennis who’s having a terrible season, and Matt Moulson who’s having a good season which is certainly splitting hairs. If one of the two was added to Sam Reinhart’s numbers he’d look even more advantaged.
So what does it all mean?
Pretty much what I expected to find when I dug into the numbers; Sam Bennett hasn’t had the best of starts to his NHL career, but then he also hasn’t had the same opportunity that the other two high forward draft choices from 2014 have enjoyed.
Draisaitl and Reinhart both get to play with generational talents, they have had way more time spent in the top six of their team’s cores and they have had way less time anchored to non impact players for regular five on five shifts.
You can’t take a thing away from Draisaitl’s production for half of last season with Taylor Hall or most of this season with Connor McDavid, but I don’t think it’s a stretch to suggest that Sam Bennett would certainly have closed the gap with similar linemates.
Heck it would be interesting in a parallel universe to have a look at Bennett and Tkachuk’s production if they swapped roles on this year’s Flames.
Players develop at different rates, face different hurdles and challenges, and break through at different times. But when the opportunities given to young players don’t line up it certainly suggests even more time should be given to those that have gone without.
Sam Bennett is a high try player with a lot of skill, he will eventually become a regular top six forward and become and impact player himself.
It only takes time and opportunity.
