Title change...

I’d rather trade benning and get someone else. Not a fan.

Oilers might need to add a bit for Zucker and Burakovsky but it's close, same for the Leafs trade, might need a mid to late round pick but it's close.
That's a better looking Oilers team then what they currently have.

Agree with title.
Benning IS a decent #4 D..-~

It's not permanent, Bouchard will be taking over at 2RD probably by October 2020. You won't find a better 2RD for less money, and anyone more expensive digs into the available cap space used to improve the forwards. You want to sign Stralman for example? Then you'll have to forego Kapanen or Burakovsky. Does 1 year of Stralman (who may or may not be more effective than Benning) have more impact on the team than multiple years of Kap or Bura?

And then there's this quote taken from JP at Lowetide:

For the past 2 seasons Sekera has been injured or highly sheltered on the third pair, so Benning has effectively been the Oilers 5D (or higher pending other injuries).

His minutes paired with any of Nurse, Klefbom or Russell over the past 2 seasons would have been mostly as the 2nd pairing (who’d have been playing top 4 if Klefbom-Benning, for instance, were the third pair?).

Benning overall: 2031min 50.0%CF 49.8%SF 53.5%GF 50.5%xGF
with Klefbom: 576min 51.4%CF 51.6%SF 48.9%GF (23-24) 53.6%xGF
with Nurse: 235min 52.8%CF 52.8%SF 66.7%GF (20-10) 53.1%xGF
with Russell: 121min 46.1%CF 48.4%SF 60.0%GF (6-4) 49.9%xGF

The above accounts for more than 45% of his 5v5 minutes (932 of his 2031) with really solid results – 49GF and 38GA (56.3%GF). As Woodguy noted there’s a bit of luck in these numbers, but he’s over 53% xGF% with Klefbom and Nurse, and effectively 50% with Russell.

I know this doesn’t fit the eye test, but IMO Benning has already demonstrated he can play substantial 2nd pairing minutes effectively. I’d have no issue with making him the Oilers 2RD.
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I wanted to add to that in terms of Benning’s defensive play (results). Calculating GF/60 and GA/60 from the “Benning 2nd pairing” minutes above, and comparing the results to the other Oilers defenders over the past 2 seasons:

Benning 3.15GF 2.45GA (932 minute 2nd pairing sample)

Klefbom 1.97GF 2.72GA
Larsson 2.04GF 2.74GA
Nurse 2.55GF 2.49GA
Russell 2.25GF 2.49GA

You needn’t agree, but I don’t see any actual evidence that Benning is a defensive liability. Quite the contrary. And I think this is generally a pretty fair comparison of each player looking at minutes in a top 4 role.

https://lowetide.ca/2019/06/07/whos-zooming-who-2/#comment-841928

The Zucker trade is similar to the one agreed to by MNW fans in the thread Zucker Trade, which I know you saw because you commented there (similar vein to your comment here). Gagner's scoring pace last year was actually better than Zucker's, I have to include something for cap reasons though.

You might be right on the Burakovsky trade - I don't know what he's worth on this site as most Caps fans use him as a throw-in on a larger deal. He must be qualified at $3.25M or he becomes a UFA in 3 weeks, this way they would get something for him rather than lose him for nothing. Three things:

1) Burakovsky's play means that he hasn't earned that $3.25M
2) Washington cannot afford him at that cap hit anyhow
3) He plays on the Capitals 4th line, he clearly isn't seen as a valuable asset in the organization

Toronto: Brown is likely worth a 4th (as seen in the VCR trade) and Kapanen is worth a late 1st or early 2nd, so I'm giving up #38 + #40 picks - more than enough IMO.

Thanks for the compliment - I think so too!

Another informative Benning post:

Q: Is 1250 minutes over 3 years a large enough sample size to prove anything? I’m genuinely asking, because on another forum I’m the only guy that sees any value in Matt Benning at all, and looking at the numbers I think he can play 2RD. Certainly between him, Sekera and Russell we should be able to cover 2RD next season, but the numbers for Benning are intriguing.

To start with I used a proxy for “top-4” each year going back to 2016-17, based on TOI v Elites taken from puckiq.com, as follows:

2016-17: Sekera (35.5%), Klefbom (34.6)
2017-18: Nurse (34.9), Klefbom (32.3)
2018-19: Klefbom (35.1), Nurse (33.8)

Next I went to naturalstattrick.com and, using their “Teammates” tool, filtered all the stats for each year for the TOI Benning spent with each player listed above. I realize there were times when Russell-Benning were the 2nd pairing, but there may have been games that they were 3rd pairing too and I didn’t want to confuse the numbers with 3rd pairing data. Then too, who you play with is as important as who you play against, so showing those games where Russell-Benning played 2nd pairing probably doesn’t give us much information about potential combos this coming season, unless the injury bug strikes down 2-3 of the top-5 guys. For reference though, Russell-Benning were together just 21:04 in 2018-19 and outscored the competition 2-1. Negligible.

So I built an excel spreadsheet combining all the figures for Benning’s ice-time with the top two LHD for each season and the results were interesting to say the least. For the 3 years combined, 5v5 minutes in the top-4 only:

TOI: 1250:19
CF%: 52.79
FF%: 53.00
SF%: 53.17
GF%: 55.65

xGF%: 53.71
SCF%: 52.75
SCGF%: 56.99
HDCF%: 52.69
HDGF%: 56.72

Sh%: 9.51
Sv%: 91.75
PDO: 1.013

Again, this is just the time he spent in the top-4, these numbers don’t include any bottom-pairing play at all. This looks like a decent top-4 blueliner from here. Is it the McDavid push? Let’s look at the numbers with and without McDavid, filtered by the aforementioned top two LHD:

With McDavid

TOI: 420:30
CF%: 55.19
FF%: 56.65
SF%: 56.14
GF%: 62.96

xGF%: 56.10
SCF%: 55.27
HDCF%: 55.10
HDGF%: 59.38

Sh%: 14.05
Sv%: 90.73
PDO: 1.048

Without McDavid:

TOI: 829:47
CF%: 51.39
FF%: 50.88
SF%: 51.49
GF%: 49.18

xGF%: 52.06
SCF%: 50.97
HDCF%: 50.80
HDGF%: 54.29

Sh%: 8.20
Sv%: 94.67
PDO: 1.029

The truth is that Benning, even when playing top-4 minutes, isn’t getting a ton of “McDavid time”, just 33.6% of his TOI was spent with the world’s best center. Of course his numbers in those minutes are better, but he performed quite well even without the CMD push.

And then there’s this: Benning personally posted amazing boxcars during these minutes. His .912 points/60 puts him tied for 58th best defenseman in the NHL over the past 3 years, while his .29 goals/60 puts him in a 5 way tie for 24th, with Jones, Ekblad, Markov and our own Darnell Nurse. (I can’t believe so many Oilers fans are calling for these two to be traded). These are phenomenal numbers.

The list of marquee players that couldn’t match Benning’s .912 p/60 over the past 3 years is long, including Slavin, Petry, Morrissey, Ekholm, Heiskanen, Gostisbehere, Miller, Pesce, Ekman-Larsson, Parayko, Ekblad, Brodin, Doughty, Lindholm, Fowler, Ristolainen, Klefbom, Hamonic and Vatanen.

Now, I’m not suggesting that Matt Benning is a top-pairing guy or even a sure-fire top 4. I do know for sure that he’s played a reasonable amount of top-4 minutes over the past 3 years and has won those minutes even playing behind a piss-poor forward group. NONE of the other top blueliners can touch Benning’s GF% without McDavid, and it isn’t close:

Benning: 49.18 (while in the top-4 only)
Nurse: 44.51
Russell: 43.87
Larsson: 43.68
Klefbom: 40.27
Sekera: 40.00 (includes bottom-pairing time)

For reference, Benning’s overall GF% without McDavid (just so we’re comparing apples-to-apples) is 51.45%.

https://lowetide.ca/2019/06/10/personal-opinion-4/comment-page-1/#comment-842479

And another:

Benning gets better results than all of the other Oilers top-6 with McDavid off the ice.

Check that, Benning gets better results than all of the Oilers top-6 with McDavid ON the ice, too. His GF% is a hair behind Nurse’s, but all his shot-based metrics are better.