Light Work: Why bringing back Jamie Benn is Fine, Actually

He's not what he once was. But he's better than the current depth.

How much does captaincy matter? What defines being a good captain of a team? Is it measured by the team’s success? Is it measured by the player’s success? Does it come down to whether or not a team wins a Cup or not? Does captaincy dictate culture…or does it merely reflect it? Is captaincy what the players say about their captain, and whether they play for their leader?

Sidney Crosby was named captain of the Pittsburgh Penguins at 21 when he won the Cup. Jonathan Toews was 22 when he won a Cup as captain of the Chicago Blackhawks. However, there is the older crew too, like Nicklas Lidstrom in Detroit, and Rod Brind’Amour in Carolina. While the type of captain is always changing, the class of player usually does not. A lot of captains tend to be the best the team’s core as to offer.

Benn is not the best this current Dallas core has to offer. He hasn’t been for awhile. When Jim Nill talked about the importance of bringing the captain back, I saw fans rolling their eyes. But here’s my question: does this current Dallas team look anything like those Penguins teams? Or the Red Wings of 2008? Chicago in 2013 or LA in 2012? Does Pittsburgh still win in 2009 if Petr Sykora is their captain instead of Crosby? Does Boston still win in 2011 if Gregory Campbell is their captain instead of Chara? Is Minnesota faltering right now because Jared Spurgeon is their captain, or are they faltering because Colorado is the better team? Rasmus Dahlin is playing the first postseason of his career right now. Was he a bad captain before and only now we can call him good? At what level does being a captain matter to the on-ice outcomes?

Benn has always been a difficult player to assess. Part of it is not his fault. The Dallas Stars organization — and this is not a shot at Jim Nill — wasted the bulk of Benn’s prime. With only two postseasons that could leverage his peak production window, the rest he made do in the twilight of his career. However, the twilight of his career has been anything but quiet. Nowadays people seem to recall his playoff penalties more than goals, hits, or fights. If he is slowly turning into a relic of the past, he’s done so with little dignity in the eyes of fans who are tired of the same patterns that seem to follow the team: the slow starts, the lack of readiness, losing Game 1’s, the absence of “pushback”, etc.

Would this all change if Benn wasn’t the captain? Would it change if Benn was no longer here?

As we discussed last summer, I was ready to move on from Benn’s tenure. Not because Benn was a poor player, but because I didn’t think it made sense cap-wise. Benn was never going to get league minimum nor did he deserve it; a 35-year old player coming one point shy of cracking 50 points is not a player who deserves 900K. Why complicate a complicated cap situation?

But we’re here now. And it’s too late. So why not just let the Benn and Tyler Seguin tenure run its course? And no. I’m not getting sentimental on you in my old age. Here’s the long and short of it: I would much rather have Benn in the bottom six than anyone else Dallas currently has in the bottom six. If Benn is playing fourth line minutes — on a one million dollar deal — would fans really rather have another penalty killer in his spot instead?¹

Not sure what you’re looking at and need a casual fan’s guide to this fancy math? Click here.

As I said on social media, I know it’s not popular to criticize role players. But there’s no reason why they shouldn’t be fair game. Dallas needs forwards who can penalty kill. But they don’t need forwards who can only play on the penalty kill. This was one of Dallas’ most exploitable weaknesses in the Minnesota series, made more pronounced by the fact that a lot of Dallas’ top forwards were point-per-game players. (Isn’t this what Edmonton has been criticized for?) Granted, Benn is not a penalty killer. But Dallas doesn’t need any more of these. This is one of the reasons why my mind has changed. This team used to have a 20-goal scorer on their fourth line. Benn was expendable then. Now; not so much.

In fact, this team could arguably benefit from playing some of their stars on the penalty kill. It’s tough watching forwards like Matt Boldy, Mark Stone, Mitch Marner, Brandon Hagel, Sebastian Aho, and Seth Jarvis killing penalties while Dallas shelves players like Roope Hintz and Wyatt Johnston, who have proven themselves capable in the past, and could very well develop into those roles in a more prominent capacity. Lest we forget, the Stars need to improve on the PK too. Going from 4th last year to 13th this year is hardly a footnote.

And so that’s my rambling, meandering defense of Benn. In a sheltered role, where he’s playing less minutes and tasked with less responsibility and thus less expectation, he adds dimension to a team that needs a little more spice of offense lower in the lineup to begin with.

If Dallas has what it takes to win the Cup, Benn being on the fourth line won’t stop that. Perhaps it’s just the allure of seeing Benn and Seguin on the ice again next year. But the TL;DR short of is this: the Stars don’t have halftime speech problems. They have hockey problems. As long as Benn can be more disciplined, he’s not adding to them.

1. Arttu Hyry doesn’t deserve to catch a stray here. Unlike others, he genuinely has a small sample size to work with.