This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Sam Bennett
Florida Panthers Center
25 goals, 90 penalty minutes, and a Conn Smythe on a 53.4 per cent chance share.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2014-15 | CGY | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | -1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0.0 | 16:00 |
| 2015-16 | CGY | 77 | 18 | 18 | 36 | -11 | 37 | 3 | 0 | 2 | 136 | 13.2 | 15:09 |
| 2016-17 | CGY | 81 | 13 | 13 | 26 | -16 | 75 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 122 | 10.7 | 14:59 |
| 2017-18 | CGY | 82 | 11 | 15 | 26 | -18 | 59 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 157 | 7.0 | 14:24 |
| 2018-19 | CGY | 71 | 13 | 14 | 27 | -6 | 93 | 4 | 0 | 2 | 115 | 11.3 | 13:17 |
| 2019-20 | CGY | 52 | 8 | 4 | 12 | -1 | 36 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 82 | 9.8 | 12:31 |
| 2020-21 | CGY/FLA | 48 | 10 | 17 | 27 | -2 | 52 | 1 | 0 | 4 | 106 | 9.4 | 14:25 |
| 2021-22 | FLA | 71 | 28 | 21 | 49 | +27 | 74 | 5 | 0 | 7 | 241 | 11.6 | 16:57 |
| 2022-23 | FLA | 63 | 16 | 24 | 40 | +5 | 54 | 4 | 0 | 3 | 193 | 8.3 | 17:24 |
| 2023-24 | FLA | 69 | 20 | 21 | 41 | +17 | 100 | 5 | 0 | 2 | 171 | 11.7 | 16:37 |
| 2024-25 | FLA | 76 | 25 | 26 | 51 | -15 | 90 | 7 | 0 | 4 | 241 | 10.4 | 17:27 |
| 2025-26 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 691 | 162 | 174 | 336 | -21 | 670 | 34 | 0 | 25 | 1565 | 10.3 | 15:24 |
This Season So Far
The 2025-26 season has not started. The empty row above is his, and both it and this paragraph fill in on their own from the morning after he first plays: what he has done, what it is worth against his own last season, and the run he is on when the two disagree.
Last Season
25 goals and 26 assists in 76 games for 51 points, minus-15, on 17:27 a night with 90 penalty minutes and 241 shots.
53.4 per cent at five-on-five, the 81st percentile, with on-ice goals of 40-33 against an expected 49-43. 10.4 per cent shooting on 241 attempts is well below his career rate and part of the same club-wide problem.
The Finesse Game
Better hands than the reputation allows. He scores from the interior — 42 per cent of his attempts from inside 20 feet — and the release in traffic is quick, which is what a man who lives at the net front needs.
26 assists is honest. He is not a distributor and does not need to be; his offence comes from being the most difficult forward in the league to remove from the paint.
The Physical Game
6-1 and 193, and among the two or three most physically punishing forwards in hockey. He hits everything, he cross-checks, he is genuinely disliked around the league, and he has been the difference in more playoff series than his regular-season totals suggest.
90 penalty minutes is the second-highest total on the club. Some of that is unavoidable and some of it is a cost the penalty kill absorbs.
The Intangibles
A 4th overall pick who spent six years in Calgary being called a disappointment, a change of club that transformed him, two Cups, and a Conn Smythe.
At 29 he is the most valuable playoff forward on a roster full of them. The regular-season numbers have never fully reflected it and there is no reason to expect them to start.
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,058 minutes
- Expected goals
- 53.4%
- 82nd pct
- Shot attempts
- 54.9%
- 91st pct
share of the chances while he was out there
share of the attempts while he was out there
Goals while he was on the ice: 40 for, 33 against. Expected: 49.2 and 42.9.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe two rank him within 14 points of one another. It was written for a back edition, with the seasons that followed already known. Neither the agreement nor the gap says anything about the eye, and this report is excluded from the club-level comparison for the same reason.
Both bars are percentiles among the 357 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 83 on their own scale — against every other report's mean. The numbers bar ranks his share of expected goals. A gap is a disagreement about where he belongs, not two scales talking past each other.
Usual linemates
2024-25 · 1058 minutes at five-on-five
Share of his five-on-five ice time spent alongside each player, measured from shift charts. Special teams are excluded: a power-play unit is not a line.
Why the numbers land there
Five-on-five, 2024-25
- The club
- FLA took 54.0% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 53.4% — 0.6 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- Third line, 1,058 minutes at five-on-five — 69th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Matthew Tkachuk | 54.7% | 52.2% | 61.8% |
| Niko Mikkola | 55.6% | 52.0% | 54.1% |
| Carter Verhaeghe | 49.7% | 55.7% | 59.8% |
54.7% together, 52.2% for him apart and 61.8% for Tkachuk apart. Tkachuk was better away from him while his own share held, which is a mark against him more than for him.
Expected-goal share while both were on the ice, and for each man in the minutes he played without the other. Apart is the pair subtracted from his own totals. It does not settle who was carrying whom — apart from each other, both were still playing with somebody — but it does say whether the share travelled when the pairing broke up.
Where he shoots from
goal on goal missed
326 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 25 of them goals. His median goal came from 11 feet. 42% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 21% from beyond forty.