Defending Brett Bennett .. among other things

I was reading through Boston University's Daily Free Press, and I decided I have to say something about a few issues that were brought up in Mike Lipka's piece.

+ First he says, "I'm pretty sure Wilson is the best all-around forward to play at BU since Chris Drury." This might pan out to be true, but let's not get a head of ourselves. Wilson is unreal, sick, dirty, nasty ... whatever complimentary adjective you want to use here. But like everyone on the Terriers' roster, he can still improve. Let's not inflate the kid's ego more than it already is. He gets to go be Bobby Big Wheels next year when he leaves for the show. Right now he needs to continue to work on being the best player he can at this level.

+ The next thing is probably what set off this whole blog post. It's not Lipka's fault, it's basically everyone's fault at BU who mounted an attack against former goaltender Brett Bennett. If you're just walking into this, Bennett was cut after a mediocre (to say the least) season. He was only a sophomore. I was shocked at the time, but apparently I was one of the few. Lipka mentions the "disastrous Brett Bennett era" ... all of ONE year. The kid wasn't given a chance to even have an era. Without a doubt, Bennett is probably still wishing he had a better season in 07-08, but it's not completely his fault. I still don't think he deserved to be cut (unless something was going on behind the scenes, which is totally possible). So many people at BU who have only jumped into hockey when they came here don't understand this. After watching hockey for how many years now, I have seen my teams have absolutely brutal years -- much worse than BU's last year (which in reality wasn't ALL that bad people). It was a transition year. If anything, you learn from those. Bennett wasn't alone last season ... at the start of the year the offense was horrible and four 'leaders' of the team got suspended by their own coach. There were a lot of problems. When watching Bennett, I never thought to myself "Wow that kid is awful." Because he wasn't. People still had the John Curry (college hockey savior) hangover and expected way more than that team could have produced. Regardless, Bennett was let go; this could be in part to the two excellent freshman goalies coming in (Keiran Millan and Grant Rollheiser) but either way people automatically thought it was because of his year. I didn't like the move; it messed with his future both academically and hockey-wise. Like I said, I don't know the complete story or what the true reason was, but people need to lay off Bennett already. It's over. And as Lipka points out, his numbers with the USHL's Indiana Ice are 8-2-1, 1.88 GAA and .939 save percentage. Good job bud. And good luck.

+ Finally, he mentions John Curry's not-so-good start with WBS. What he doesn't mention is that he is coming off an injury and is still finding his groove. He has some stronger competition in Adam Berkhoel this year (who has three shutouts already), and I think that will make him a better goaltender. In the meantime, he's chillin' in Pittsburgh until Marc-Andre Fleury gets back on the ice from his undisclosed injury.

Ciao! xo