Flyers signing Sam Bennett would be disastrous mistake

Some people want the Philadelphia Flyers to sign Sam Bennett in free agency. It would be the worst mistake this team has made in years.

The Philadelphia Flyers deciding to commit dollars and term to Sam Bennett in free agency would possibly be the worst mistake this team has made this millennium.

It is as it always is around this time of the hockey calendar. The fans of teams who are not involved in the conference finals are looking around at what their favorite hockey club can do this offseason to make their team better and maybe have them play hockey for a little bit longer than they did. It’s just so natural. Especially when one of the most coveted pending unrestricted free agents is still playing hockey and his team is barreling through to the Stanley Cup Final.

Sam Bennett is at the front of everyone’s mind. The 28-year-old center is playing the playoffs of his life — most recently scoring two goals and two assists in the first two games of the Eastern Conference Final against the Carolina Hurricanes — and has most fans drooling over the possibility of him signing for their team. And that includes fans of the Philadelphia Flyers.

It feels like a somewhat easy suggestion to make. This team desperately needs someone capable of being a top-six center. Signing one in free agency would be easy. Who is available? Oh, it’s this Bennett guy who is scoring points right now. The frenzy even has writers who are paid a full-time salary to cover this team, to get all riled up and blush like a teenaged girl at the very thought of Bennett signing in Philadelphia. And scoffing at the notion that the Flyers might be better off signing the most talented forward to hit the open market since John Tavares decided to leave Long Island and go to his hometown team in Toronto seven years ago. This isn’t about Mitch Marner, though.

Let’s breakdown all the reasons why someone might say that the Flyers signing Bennett would be a good idea, though.

What is Bennett’s actual impact on the ice?

Some people might say that Sam Bennett solves a lot of the Flyers’ problems down the middle. That is probably half-true. He certainly can play a whole lot of minutes at center, but considering his best years were behind the two-way god of Aleksander Barkov, he has been able to get away with less responsibility overall. Bennett in Philadelphia would have to be The Guy and would take on much more than anyone possibly could and he could return to the level of play he had in Calgary (not great).

Even looking at Bennett’s production, do you really see a top-six center than is capable of taking on that all-situations play? His best season point-wise was just last season with a whopping 25 goals and 51 points in 76 games. That is fairly decent for someone averaging less than 18 minutes a game during the regular season. But, when looking at what some Flyers did during this past season that was considered an offensive drought when Matvei Michkov or Travis Konecny wasn’t on the ice, it’s not too far off.

Sean Couturier — the player that a large section of Flyers fans want banished from this team because his contract is such a burden — scored 15 goals and 45 points last season while averaging even fewer minutes than Bennett did. And he didn’t get the gift of playing on Florida’s power play like Bennett did (and score seven of his 25 goals on that man advantage).

Even looking further down the lineup, Noah Cates is just starting to really hit his stride and is considerably better defensively than Bennett, and the 26-year-old even managed to put up 37 points — with a whole three of them coming on the power play. And even Cates is just playing center because he can, and in an ideal world would be on the wing — and even he managed to not be too far behind in Bennett in overall impact.

In this hypothetical world, Bennett would be essentially pushing Cates out of the projected top six on the Flyers and everything would get dramatically better, right?

While it’s just another piece of information and not the absolute top thing to take into consideration, when looking at the overall and isolated impact card provided by HockeyViz, we see that Cates provided so much more value than Bennett did this past season, in almost every single area of the game of hockey. Offensively, Bennett might have been better on the power play with a whole plus-1 above league average impact, but Cates balances that out with his even-strength offense. And then defensively, it’s a world of difference. Eleven whole percentage points of difference, and with Bennett taking the edge in penalty kill. But even when it comes to finishing talent and the ability to not take penalties like Cates has, it’s an easy swing in the current and younger Flyer.

We’re not saying that the Flyers have the better player right now, but it’s an important note to not just want the shiny guy who is still playing hockey on a very good team.

What would Bennett possibly cost?

According to Evolving-Hockey’s contract projection model, Bennett’s most likely contract signed in unrestricted free agency if he doesn’t re-sign with the Panthers, is a seven-year deal with a cap hit just above $7.5 million. That’s a very solid chunk of change, even if the salary cap ceiling is going to dramatically rise in the next few years. It

Even considering a player we have already talked about in Sean Couturier, his deal goes on for five more seasons at approximately $7.75 million per year on the Flyers’ cap. Do you really want centers like Couturier and Bennett taking up over $15 million of your available salary cap? Fifteen million dollars committed to two players who, ideally, aren’t even playing on the top forward line when this team is good again.

And all of this doesn’t even take recency bias and the Hockey Men falling in love with all the extra curriculars that Bennett provides. In the real world, it wouldn’t be completely out of the question for Bennett’s contract to have a cap hit over $8.5 million. Lots and lots of dollars committed to a not-so impactful center beyond bashing people’s brains in and handing out concussions like he’s a Jehovah’s Witness. Knocking on every door of the neighborhood and then running whoever answers head-first into the nearest brick wall.

The Grit of It All

We get it. We all want the Philadelphia Flyers to play with a little bit of an edge and for opposing teams to loathe facing them. That is totally understandable. No one can really deny that they would like that, too.

But shouldn’t that be a priority later in the whole roster building process? The Flyers sort of need someone to put the puck into the back of the net beyond their Russian phenom and a handful of other guys. Physicality and grit are attributes that are certainly valued around here, but not when those are the calling cards of the player and otherwise, they’re putting up numbers similar to centers you already have or could have for much cheaper.

Bennett isn’t the only player that can bring an edge and even then, it is much easier to make it a team-wide mentality instead of depending on one player who is about to be past his prime, to do all the heavy lifting for you.

And especially when it comes to Bennett and where he plays.

It doesn’t take a whole lot of brain power to think of Colin Campbell working for the NHL, being one of the most connected men in hockey, and his son Gregory Campbell being the Panthers’ assistant general manager. The same Colin Campbell who everyone knows would be a massive thorn in the side of his corworkers if anything doesn’t go his son’s way — because he has done it before. So, they deal with the Panthers with a slightly lighter touch. That eventually results in players like Bennett being able to play on much more of an edge than the rest of the league.

It is not too crazy to think that if Bennett didn’t play hockey for the Panthers, that he would be suspended a whole lot more and suddenly isn’t even on the ice enough to be of value to his new team. Bennett has done so many dirty plays over his career that were questionable, there is an entire Twitter thread about it that is miles long. Do you not think that if he was wearing Orange and Black, that the results would be different?

The timing of the signing

So, what does signing Bennett really do? The very idea of it doesn’t even really feel like it’s about Bennett himself. It’s that the Flyers have a desperate need and these people are sick and tired of this rebuild being executed over multiple years. They need progress right now — right now! — and the easiest way is not to think of trades or developing young prospects, but to just sign a guy who is going to turn 30 years old before the 2026-27 season.

We have heard several dozen times from every single Flyers executive that they are eyeing the 2026 offseason as the opportunity to really improve and turn a corner. At most, this summer would be addressing some needs without much commitment. Maybe a top-six center who wouldn’t mind being a trade chip at the deadline after signing a one-year deal, and ideally a goaltender who is capable of scoring nine out of every 10 shots he faces. The largest impact move we could reasonably see them doing is going out to trade for a young center who has multiple years of control and the other team already has established players ahead of him on their depth chart. A dude just waiting for the right chance and could be had for fairly cheap.

Those are the types of small, less committal changes that are much more realistic than the Flyers just dropping a cartoonishly large sack of cash for a player who feels more like a finishing piece on a Cup-contending team, than a core part of it.

If this was a Flyers team with that amount of cap space available and no other changes needed to be made? A Flyers team that just needs a middle-six center to open up some ice for their several skilled forwards already on their roster? This would be a fine addition, given the right situation.

Now is not the time for the Flyers to be going for this. Would be the ultimate cart-before-the-horse move.

Ultimately, the Flyers possibly signing Bennett would be committing themselves to not improving. They would be committing themselves to being a bubble playoff team for the foreseeable future because they immediately become so much less flexible and for a player that might not even be all that impactful.

It would be the worst mistake they have made in years. Several years. Maybe even dozens of years. But sure, go ahead and write about how much you think Bennett would be the key addition to this team instead of the winger who just scored over 100 points and will be a Selke finalist for years to come. Sure, man.