[The Athletic] Lors de la victoire des Sabres contre les Blackhawks, Zach Benson continue de pousser pour rester
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seeldoger47
@Sabres de Buffalo
[The Athletic] Lors de la victoire des Sabres contre les Blackhawks, Zach Benson continue de pousser pour rester
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seeldoger47
4 Comments
>Zach Benson might want to start looking for permanent housing in Buffalo.
>The 18-year-old played his eighth game of the season on Sunday when the Buffalo Sabres beat the Chicago Blackhawks 3-2. He gets one more game before the Sabres must either return him to junior or keep him in Buffalo and burn a year of his entry-level contract.
>Against the Blackhawks, Benson made a heck of a case to stay in the NHL. From the beginning of training camp, Sabres coach Don Granato has talked about the details of Benson’s game. On Friday, he mentioned that Benson has more NHL habits than he does major junior habits and that you often need to rewind to pick up on all of the little things Benson does to impact a game.
>That was the case in the first period of the Sabres’ win on Sunday night. What will show up on the stat sheet is Benson’s assist on Rasmus Dahlin’s goal to put Buffalo up 1-0. Benson collected a pass on the rush and turned his body back toward his trailing teammates, buying time and keeping the puck away from two Chicago skaters. He found Dahlin, who picked his spot and got the goal.
>But as Granato mentioned, sometimes you need to rewind to see everything Benson does. That shift started with Benson winning a puck battle to start a Sabres possession in the offensive zone. At the start of that possession, he got a point-blank chance in front and was stopped by Blackhawks goalie Petr Mrázek. He then collected a turnover as the Blackhawks were trying to break the puck out and had another prime scoring chance but tried a drop pass that didn’t work. It was his stickwork on the backcheck that made Chicago’s breakout attempt a clunky one and helped the Sabres turn the play the other way for the goal…
>Before the Sabres left for this three-game road trip, Granato said these games would be big in regards to the final decision on whether to send Benson back to junior. If that’s the case, Benson’s passing the test. He has an assist in both games and has been on the ice for 12 five-on-five scoring chances for and only six scoring chances against.
>That doesn’t necessarily make this an easy decision for the Sabres. But forward depth has been a problem for this team early in the season. The Sabres aren’t scoring at the same rate they did a season ago and they’re now without Tage Thompson for the next month. Granato has struggled to put together more than two solid scoring lines. On Sunday, he again opted to go with 11 forwards and seven defensemen, in part to ease Henri Jokiharju back into the lineup after he missed two games with an illness.
>But even the way Granato has handled ice time with 12 forwards shows the team’s depth in that area is lacking. Asking an 18-year-old to be a solution to that isn’t a perfect answer, but Benson has been one of the team’s best forwards in each of the last two games since returning from injury. In eight games, he now has four assists. When the Sabres kept Benson around after training camp, Granato said it was because they believed he could help them win hockey games. He did that on Sunday night with another big deadline looming.
>“I would suspect it’s not going to be an easy decision,” Granato said Friday.
The Sabres would be noticeably weaker if they removed Benson and R. Johnson, two players who they probably didn’t expect to lean so much on, from the roster. Ideally this experience would inform them about Rosen and Kulich…
For me, there’s no question. Benson does things that no other forwards in our roster do. He stays
Kids a fucking stud, can’t believe how young he is
I hope he sticks around I don’t see a reason for him not too. Truthfully this chl rule needs to be changed possibly expanded if they want to do this going forward I think it’s ridiculous how little of a sample size you get .