2016 Edmonton Oilers prospects
#3 Tyler Benson
Previously: N/A, drafted #32 overall in 2016
I don’t know what it is about Edmonton Oilers and second round draft choices, but I sure hope it changes soon. Let’s rephrase that: I hope it has changed already, we just don’t know it yet. Maybe Tyler Benson is the one.
The Oilers selected Benson very early on Day 2 of this past June’s NHL Draft, using the #32 selection they had bought and paid for with a 29th-place finish. It’s a scenario that has played out time and again in recent years, as the Oilers have finished in the bottom three in the last six full 82-game seasons in a row. Every year it seems they have a pick in the #31-33 range, at least until they trade it away. In the Jujhar Khaira post we examined Oilers’ sorry draft record in the third round, and unfortunately the same holds true for Round 2. Especially for Edmonton’s natural spot in it:
Ugh. That’s a lot of valuable picks either spent on players who have never made much of an impression at the big league level (give or take Anton Lander, seemingly the best of the bunch), or traded away for questionable return. Not that the teams acquiring said picks have done much with them either, depending on your opinion on Justin Schultz who like Lander is a success if GP is your gospel.
Benson is a WHL product like Pitlick, Musil, and Moroz before him, three guys who have been in the system long enough to play ten pro seasons while amassing just 31 NHL games. What’s to suggest the new guy will be different? The answer of course is that Tyler Benson is his own person writing his own story, having no connection with drafts past nor with departed scouts and administrations. Let’s not tar him with that brush; we merely introduce the above as the extremely low bar that need to be cleared by next-generation Oilers prospects. Benson has plenty of opportunity to blaze a brave new trail, indeed represents something of a home run swing by Bob Green and his crew.
Staples: What do the Oilers have in Tyler Benson?
I’ve long been interested in the relationship between elite young talent and its ability to translate into NHL success, so let’s take a moment to examine that through the prism of Tyler Benson. He’s an Edmonton native and one of the more famous amateurs to come from this neck of the woods in quite some time. He generated an enormous buzz as a 14-year-old with South Side Athletic Club’s Southgate Lions in the Alberta Major Bantam Hockey League, destroying Ty Rattie’s league scoring record by 15 points with 57-89-146 in just 33 games. That’s a searing 4.4 points per game, not a number one comes across too often in this day and age, or any day and age for that matter. Benson did cool off to “just” 3.4 P/G in the postseason, ending the campaign with 72 goals and 183 points in 44 games. I guess he generated some buzz.
Despite good intentions I never did get out to see Benson that season, and especially regret that inaction now that the local hotshot has been drafted by the local team. No scouting report archived here. Let’s instead refer to an actual expert, Lions coach Taylor Harnett, for an appraisal of his phenom:
“Every great player has something that separates themselves from the others, whether it be one or two things. I think Tyler has six of them. He’s exceptionally quick, exceptionally strong, he’s got exceptional ability on a few different levels as far as puck-handling, agility shooting, everything. Right now from a coaching standpoint he’s the full package.”
Well that sounds promising enough, though Harnett’s very next remark provides some context:
“I first saw him at a conditioning camp and with his size and strength, someone actually had to tell me how old he was, I thought he was older.”
Advanced physical development can be a major difference maker at that level, an advantage that won’t last forever.
Then there are glowing game reports like this one
Ty Rattie knew it was only a matter of time before his once-ridiculous Alberta Major Bantam Hockey League record would eventually be surpassed. Sure enough on Jan. 25, it happened when Edmonton’s Tyler Benson, a forward with the Southside Athletic Club Lions bantam AAA club, set an even more ridiculous AMBHL record when he had a 10(!) point night with two goals and eight assists in a 15-0 victory over Camrose.
…which for all their superlatives leave gnawing doubts about the calibre of competition and its effect on those “ridiculous” points totals. So there’s that.
But there was enough “there” there that Benson went #1 in the WHL midget draft that spring, and was considered a serious candidate to be granted the WHL’s first Exceptional Player status. In the end he never applied, and to this day the league has never had such a player. (Its brother league in Ontario has had four such players over the years, and three of them — John Tavares, Aaron Ekblad, and Connor McDavid — went on to be first-overall NHL draft choices.)
Heady company to even be in the conversation with those guys, but it didn’t happen so let’s confine ourselves to looking at the list of first-overall picks in the Dub’s bantam draft. The list at right, courtesy good ol’ Wikipedia, provides an interesting cross-section of players who shared the common trait of being excellent at 14. Lots of future NHLers in that group, including four future Oilers aside from Benson himself. One true superstar in Toews, one future first-overall in Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, a stud d-man in Bouwmeester, and the whole gamut from solid NHLer to tweener, with some legitimately good prospects among the younger set.
I’d say that’s enough to say the selection process (presumptive best player in his 14-year-old draft class) does a good job of identifying NHL talent. Elite talent? That’s another question for a cloudier day.
While Benson follows such high-end prospects as Virtanen and Barzal, perhaps a better comp can be found with a guy mentioned earlier. Ty Rattie went second in the 2008 WHL bantam draft behind some dude with two last names, but came with Benson-level hype after emphatically setting his original AMBHL scoring record. They’re both wingers of similar size (Rattie is 6’0, 190, Benson 6’0, 201), the former a February birthday, the latter March. It’s instructive to compare their comparative seasons side-by-side.
Both players’ draft year underlined in blue. Rattie’s on his own after that, turning pro after the red line while Benson’s future stretches like a blank page.
But at first they had plenty in common. Both players had a trial run at 15 and were full-fledged WHL rookies at 16, with very similar results. Rattie had by far the more impressive draft year, bursting through the point-per-game threshold and becoming a star on one of the league’s best teams. Benson on the other hand, had a star-crossed year in which two different afflictions sidelined him for extended periods. He played just 30 games, many/most of them at less than 100%. His 28 points is unimpressive at one level, perhaps very impressive at another given his physical issues and the terribleness of his team. The Giants had the second worst record in the Dub, their -74 goal differential third worst. Benson’s “even” +/- suggests strongly that he wasn’t the problem. His absence on the other hand? Big problem.
Here’s where the comparison with Rattie gets a little weird. After his superb draft season, the Portland winger was selected early in the second round, 32nd overall — the exact same place the Oilers took Benson. Pretty comparable players through age 17, but Rattie remained healthy and continued to ramp up his play through his draft year. Benson didn’t. One hopes that Peter Chiarelli and company have solid information that the maladies — a cyst near his tailbone and a recurrent groin injury — are behind him, to borrow a famous George Brett quote.
By some accounts they affected his play — or at least one perversely hopes they did when reading reports like this one from SBN’s Justin Blades:
Whether the result of lingering issues with that recovery, or the effect of having his pre-season preparation derailed, he had difficulty getting into the swing of things, and left many scouts wondering where the player they’d seen in previous years had gone. Lauded for his all-around ability and relentlessness, Benson often seemed reluctant to engage in the play this year. Part of the reason he was ranked so highly was his determination on the forecheck and using his exceptional lower-body strength to remove an attacking player from the puck in the defensive zone, and that ability was not witnessed on a consistent basis. Showing not only no improvement, but a seeming regression in his play, Benson slowly dropped down the ranks as the games ticked away.
Blades did have some kind words elsewhere in his detailed report, but his final paragraph was full of question marks, wnding up with the inevitable “was this injury-plagued season an anomaly, or will he be a player who struggles to stay in the lineup?”
Of course we have five more years of information on Rattie which I have shown as a sobering reality as to what can happen to players of similar pedigree. In his Draft +1 campaign he improved by half a point a game for the third year in a row (!), easily surpassed 100 points in both his post-draft years and was one of the top stars in the Dub. But the pro career has been a different matter, three seasons each split between AHL and NHL with the solid majority being in the lower loop. His points per game has gradually improved in both leagues, and by 2015-16 he showed signs of scoring at the NHL level. But today he is a 23-year-old on a one-year $650,000 contract and still much to prove. Benson, five years his junior, may have a higher ceiling but has some catching up to do first. It’s going to take time.
That said, many of the draft rankings had him ranked right around where he went. One of them, Steve Kournianos of The Draft Analyst, had some high praise for their 29th-ranked prospect:
He is a nightmare to defend because he is as physically punishing with the puck as he is without it. There are only a few of his 2016 draft-eligible peers (Auston Matthews in particular) who makes successful on-the-spot corrections once a chance to create offense in a specific area of the ice is no longer an option. Benson is very shifty with tremendous balance, meaning he can continue to move if he gets hit at the same time he decides to change direction…his ability to swarm the puck and do something with it thereafter makes him a highly-dangerous prospect to overlook. We’re still not sure whether to classify him as a playmaker or a scorer because he can be both, sometimes off the same cycle, when he will either create quality chances for others, or grab the puck and wire a heavy, accurate shot with a quick release.
Alrighty then, let’s open up a spot on McDavid’s wing, shall we? But first, there’s the small matter of firmly establishing those skills at the WHL level over a full season, then another, and then undertaking the task of translating them to the professional level. Promising as he is, this prospect will need a little basting before we see him challenging for a big league job. For now he’s a curio, but fascinatingly enough of one to debut at #3 on our Oilers prospects list.
Expectations for 2016-17: Maybe more “wish” than “expectation”, but the need is for Benson to play a full season and re-establish his credentials as a high-end scorer. By further developing his substantial all-around game Benson stands an excellent chance of a future NHL career, but if he’s to be a impact player that should become apparent in the upcoming campaign.
Recently at the Cult of Hockey:
McCurdy: Months later, Hall-Larsson trade still generating fallout
Staples: More blowback on Chiarelli over Hall-Larsson swap
Staples: Chiarelli and McLellan get advantage for Oilers at World Cup
Oilers prospects
Willis: #4, Can Paigan keep improving?
McCurdy: #5, C Jujhar Khaira
McCurdy: #6, G Laurent Brossoit
Staples: #7, LD Markus Niemelainen
Willis: #8, LD Dillon Simpson
McCurdy: #9, RW Anton Slepyshev
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