Sam Bennett’s next contract and the price of an NHL playoffs pedigree

As Sam Bennett’s playoff lore continues to grow with each playoff goal scored, his pending free agency only grows more fascinating.

On the one hand, you have a soon-to-be 29-year-old second-line center — a decent one that plays with an edge and has scored at a 53-point pace since joining the Florida Panthers. And that’s despite rarely getting much time on the top power play. A great player, but far from an elite one.

On the other hand, there’s Playoff Bennett: an absolute monster who elevates his game in big moments, scores big goals, makes big hits and knows how to toe the line. Over the last three playoffs, Bennett has 25 goals and 48 points in 55 games — a 35-goal and 68-point pace. The former ranks 12th among the 99 forwards to have played 20 or more playoff games, and that’s again without much time on the top power play. Playoff Bennett is a gamer, a tough-as-nails scorer 32 of 32 teams would be lucky to have. Playoff Bennett is elite.

Balancing between those two worlds is not easy. There’s a camp that might tell you Bennett will probably age terribly given the miles on his body, his ability to elevate in the playoffs isn’t repeatable, and that whoever signs him will be making a huge mistake. There’s another camp that might tell you the playoffs are all that matters, that Bennett will continue to be a proven warrior for his entire contract, and that he’s easily worth $8-10 million.

The truth likely lies somewhere in between those two extremes and that makes deciding how much to pay him this summer’s most fascinating question. Bennett is Schrödinger’s UFA, a Rorschach test of what someone believes matters most in this sport.

Regular-Season Bennett

Before we get to the playoff stuff, let’s start with the projection: It’s not great.

AFP Analytics projects Bennett’s next deal at $6.6 million over six years, while Evolving Hockey is at $7.5 million over seven years. The model would not be super thrilled with either deal, giving Bennett a 35 percent chance of living up to $6.6 million and a 21 percent chance of living up to $7.5 million. And there seems to be a real chance that a team goes above that range. Over six years, the forecast is $5.6 million: three years of being a $6 million player, and then a decline in the back half.

That’s partly a result of aging. Bennett has 107 total comps and the weighted average of their trajectories has him earning 4.2 goals above average over the next six years. That’s a fair bit below the 9.8 goals above average when using the population average. Essentially, Bennett carries the profile of a player who does not age well, which shouldn’t be surprising considering that’s the exact worry many have with Bennett.

In UFA terms, Bennett looks like a classic middle-class overpay. A guy paid to be a second liner in his late 20s who devolves into a third liner in his 30s. Giving Bennett first-line money only increases the chance of an albatross contract in that vein, especially if his contract also carries big term. That Bennett struggles a bit defensively and is potentially propped up by playing with a superstar adds to the concern. There’s a reason many are worried about this deal, as it has all the telltale red flags of past UFA disasters.

There’s a problem with that dreary forecast above, though: it assumes that Bennett’s usage won’t change — namely, his power-play time. Part of the value dilemma here is that Bennett is a 55-point center which isn’t that impressive for a player angling for $8 million. Within the context of his lack of power-play time, though, it leaves some room to grow.

That was evident after the 4 Nations break when Bennett got a prime slot on the top power play in the absence of Matthew Tkachuk. Bennett scored 16 points in 21 games, a 62-point pace, a figure that’s probably closer to what a team can expect (I’d project 65 points for Bennett as a PP1 regular) if they shell out a big fat cheque for Bennett’s services. It is worth noting that Bennett’s play-driving numbers did tank without Tkachuk on his line, though that’s likely accounted for whereas a power play usage increase wouldn’t be.

Bumping up Bennett’s power-play time would help his forecast considerably where his projected Net Rating would get a 2.4-goal boost, bringing his market value up to $7 million — much closer to the ballpark needed for a major raise to be worthwhile.

Whether or not Bennett’s value should be tied to offensive opportunities mostly out of his control is up for discussion, but it is arguably one factor that depresses his current value — at least on my end. This is where two of Bennett’s comps could offer some insight toward Bennett’s upside: Nazem Kadri and Zach Hyman. While they aren’t his top comps (Kadri played tougher minutes, Hyman was better defensively), they are above-average matches that were in a similar situation.

Past Toronto Maple Leafs teams had a lot of mouths to feed offensively, which put Kadri and Hyman lower in the pecking order as fifth options behind the team’s big four. Both play with an edge that made them questionable bets to age gracefully, and both were looked at as beneficiaries of playing with better players. Bennett, in Florida, finds himself in a similar situation behind Florida’s big four.

We know what happened next: both Kadri and Hyman blossomed elsewhere as third or fourth offensive options, elevating their play to fit a bigger role. Both players looked like 55-to-60-point players just before turning 30. Both players turned into something more with multiple 75-plus point seasons.

Kadri especially feels like an apt comparison: a top-10 pick with a lot of offensive skill that didn’t always get the opportunity to show it. Once he did, he took a huge unexpected leap — the one many had waited a long time to see from him. His forecast around the same age looks fairly similar to Bennett’s. What he did next serves as a potential best-case scenario.

Kadri is an outlier, that much is obvious from the unique and unlikely path he charted. For every one of him, there’s another 10 (or more) whose paths went as expected. The element that made it a little more predictable was the opportunity Kadri was afforded in Colorado as the team’s fourth guy. Still in the shadows behind the team’s big three, but with a little more spotlight than he had in Toronto.

At face value, that’s the $8 million question for Bennett: Can he chart a similar path to be a team’s third- or fourth-best forward?

Based on Corey Sznajder’s tracking work, he certainly has the puck skills to do so. Bennett is no passenger on Tkachuk’s line — he’s very involved in all three zones, chipping in on breakouts and creating a lot of chances in zone. He’s also elite at moving the puck through the neutral zone with control, a skill he probably doesn’t get enough credit for.

For Bennett to be worth the big bucks, he does need to offer a bit more in the regular season — and luckily he does appear to have the tools to do so. No one knows exactly how he’ll age, and I’m not saying the Kadri or Hyman path is a guarantee. That’s still the best-case scenario and not the most likely one. But there are some reasons to be optimistic that a Bennett deal won’t be as bad as the sticker shock that comes with paying a 55-point center $8 million.

A bigger role could suit him fine to make the deal more palatable. But the real reason is what Bennett does in the postseason — if it’s repeatable.

Playoff Bennett

Based on Bennett’s work during the regular season, the expectation for his Offensive Rating over the last five playoffs was an 82-game pace of plus-4.5. Instead, he’s at plus-10.8. Of the 317 forwards who have played 10 or more playoff games during that time, Bennett was expected to be the 95th most impactful offensively — a high-end 2C. He was instead the 33rd, a legit 1C-calibre player.

Playoff Bennett is a different player. Playoff Bennett is a dawg.

Among players who have actually accrued a decent enough sample (41 games) over the last five playoffs, only six have elevated their offensive game by six or more goals per 82: Jonathan Marchessault, Zach Hyman, Ondrej Palat, Sam Bennett, Artturi Lehkonen and Leon Draisaitl. Two of those — Marchessault and Palat — have been one-playoff wonders. The other four do it (almost) every year, having four of five seasons where their Offensive Rating jumps by four or more goals per 82. Consider that the gold standard of dawg (with Connor McDavid too, of course), an exclusive group that Bennett is a part of.

There is no doubt Bennett has elevated his game in the playoffs. The big question is how much more money he deserves based on whether or not he can keep doing it. That’s not an easy question to answer.

Plenty of teams have been burned by paying a lot of money to “proven playoff performers” only to see their new dawg doesn’t fetch after the cheque clears. Ville Leino? Bryan Bickell? Hell, even Palat himself for the Devils probably qualifies. The reason for that is because playoff elevation is, usually, not a measurably repeatable skill. That’s the company line from the analytics community and why it’s generally not wise to pay for it. Many teams have already learned that very expensive lesson the hard way.

But there are always exceptions to the rule. Is Bennett that exception?

The thought of paying for an exception to the rule is a queasy sentiment. If the idea is that Bennett “saves himself” for the playoffs because he likely can’t survive playing that way over an entire regular season, the very logic flies in the face of a long-term contract. It’s not something that will hold up well in Years 4 through 7 when there’s a lot more wear and tear on his body adding up. At a certain point the body breaks down and that’s an even bigger worry for a player already saving his body for the second season. And if Bennett is less effective than his paycheck when it doesn’t matter and then is no longer able to elevate when it does, what’s the point? Or if he can, but it’s not to the level of his lofty paycheck, again, what’s the point?

Think also about Hyman now being a gold standard dawg — because he absolutely was not that in Toronto. That’s the trouble with these assessments. Because they’re built over small samples, there is a lot of randomness that can muddy the waters making it difficult to separate signal from noise. Things can change quickly where yesterday’s playoff hero can become tomorrow’s playoff zero.

With that being said, I do believe that just because something hasn’t been measured doesn’t mean it’s not real. The difference with Bennett is that he hasn’t just been a one-season warrior — he has done it almost every playoffs. In each of the last three postseasons, he’s been an enormous factor for the Panthers, much more so than the regular season. Just because it’s not repeatable for the population does not necessarily mean it’s not repeatable for Bennett.

I’m cautiously optimistic that Bennett can elevate in the playoffs consistently to some degree, but the issue is establishing that degree and deciding what to pay for it. No team should expect Bennett to consistently elevate his offense by six extra goals per 82. But a safer bet to assess his value might just be to include his playoff stats with his regular-season work.

(Sidebar: This is something I want to look into more to see if it actually adds more insight, but for now is just a thought experiment for Bennett’s unique case).

Here’s how that looks. Over the last three seasons (which is what the model uses for projection purposes), Bennett’s Net Rating per 82 is plus-5.9 over 208 games. In the playoffs, it’s plus-12.2 over 57 games. Using the full 265 games, season and playoffs, Bennett’s pace would then be plus-7.2 — a 1.3 goal jump.

Add that to Bennett’s regular-season forecast and it ends up being worth an extra $700,000 per season. That feels fair to me — a nice bonus for the dawg factor, but not a ludicrous overpayment for it.

Bennett is this year’s trickiest free agent. He might have more to give in a bigger role and there might be something repeatable to his playoff elevation, even if it’s not quite to the degree he’s delivered in the past. It’s not that hard to get to a valuation of $7-8 million under those terms, even if it’s a number that feels scary on the surface. Add PP1 usage and give a bonus for his potential playoff aptitude and you get to $7.7 million — right in the ballpark of what Evolving Hockey has forecast for him.

Anything more than that very likely spells trouble where a team pays far too much for something Bennett hasn’t proven (whether he can be a team’s top-four forward) or may not be repeatable (the dawg factor). With the wear-and-tear he likely already has on his body at an age where a decline is likely, there’s a lot of risk here that a massive overpayment only exacerbates. That could also lead to a negative loop driven by Bennett trying to do too much to prove his worth, a trap many overpaid players have fallen into in the past.

There’s also the notion that winning teams aren’t in the habit of overpaying players, something Bennett’s current team is all too aware of. That he hasn’t signed yet with his current team is probably a red flag in and of itself. If the Panthers won’t pay the price, a worse team probably shouldn’t either. If contract efficiency is a major path to victory, paying a luxury price for someone that a three-time Cup finalist deemed expendable at that cost is probably not a winning strategy.

It’s a tricky contract to price and an incredibly intriguing one given the multi-faceted nature of Bennett’s value. He’s a second-season player and that has merit. There isn’t a team in this league that wouldn’t want Bennett on their team for that reason.

Whether they actually benefit from it depends entirely on the price.

Data via Evolving Hockey, All Three Zones and AFP Analytics.

(Top photo: Sam Navarro / Imagn Images)