GARTH'S CORNER: Reinhart Benched

Nice shttshow ya gots on da go b'ys...Maybe focus should be on beating teams other than the one up the QEW..

Put some new flooring down in da basement would ya Garf b'y..

2nd overall pick, huh? Interesting.

If Buffalo was in the hunt for that 3/8 spot I would agree that it was a bad coaching decision, and he would have been better served in the press box or on the ice. No consequence to the standings, no harm in benching him if he did wrong.

If Buffalo was in the hunt for that 3/8 spot I would agree that it was a bad coaching decision, and he would have been better served in the press box or on the ice. No consequence to the standings, no harm in benching him if he did wrong.
- leafsfann

agreed. No need to coddle young players. He'll learn from it and move on. Even the captain agreed with the decision. Should be a non story at this point

Have no problem with the benching. BUT if you are going to dress the kid then bench him for a period and play him the next two (no need to embarrass him). If you were going to sit him for the entire game then leave him in the press box, like they did with Zadorov. It just shows how Bylsma has lost this team or at least the young players that matter, his antiquated system and coaching methods are more and more evident.

If I were a Sabres fan, my main issue wouldn't be that he benched Reinhart, but how he benched him. Yeah, the Sabres are out of it, but your still a professional hockey team who's job is to win. By dressing the kid and forcing him to sit on the bench the whole game, your forcing the team to play down a man for the entire game. Sure, it's just one spot, but this is a league where the littlest thing can become a weakness and be exploited. By sacrificing a roster spot to teach a kid a lesson, your not only punishing the kid, your punishing the team. Your making it harder to win, which in a way is also punishing the fan base, which, let's be honest has lost enough.

Another though, what if one of the players who was taking on extra minutes to cover for Reinhart ended up getting catastrophically injured? Is it worth exposing someone like Eichel to another injury just to teach a lesson?

If your not going to play a player, don't dress him. What Dan did is just stupid and just places into question his level of commitment to winning.

Catastrophically injured eh? Maybe playing more minutes gives you a higher chance of pulling something because you are tired and cramping, but a player getting seriously hurt is not a cause of more minutes.

Also part of the punishment is supposed to effect the rest of the team. Its like you're coach in high school making the whole team do laps because one guy (frank)ed up. Its supposed to weigh on Rhino's mind and show the whole team not to (frank) with the team rules...

Catastrophically injured eh? Maybe playing more minutes gives you a higher chance of pulling something because you are tired and cramping, but a player getting seriously hurt is not a cause of more minutes.
- Carrsrkewl9

What I mean by that is the more a player is on the ice, the higher the chances he gets injured. I'm not talking pulling a muscle ether, I'm talking like Matt Cook on Marc Savard. All it takes is an extra second, and it's one thing to expose a player to that extra if your shortening your bench to try to get a win, but seems like a useless risk to me to send a message to a player.

Your point is completely nonsense. Does that mean that if Reinhart was playing he would have been the one that got hurt instead of the guy playing his minutes?

Your point is completely nonsense. Does that mean that if Reinhart was playing he would have been the one that got hurt instead of the guy playing his minutes?
- adambuffalo

Not at all, what you seem to think i'm saying is that an injury would be predisposed, and it would be better if X player was in to take it vs Y player. That's not what I'm saying at all.

What I'm saying is every time a player steps on the ice, he runs the risk of taking a bad hit (into the boards, a high elbow, a bad charge, etc). That percentage is fluid, changing with given teams and even given players on the ice. But, for the sake of argument, let's say the odds are 1% (it's probably lower than that, but I'm just using it as an example of my point).

Now, lets say before every shift, you give a player a deck of 100 cards, one of those cards is an injury, could be a muscle issue, broken bone, brain turning to mush from a bad boarding play. You don't know. But you do know that every-time a player steps on the ice, he has to draw a card. Do you really want your high end players drawing cards to send a point? Maybe you do, but if it were me, I wouldn't. Not when it would be just as effective as to scratch the player, let someone from Rochester play and get experience, and fine the player and be done with it.

Look, I'm not saying the odds arn't extremely slim that something bad wouldn't happen. I'm just saying it's a needless risk, considering there are better options to punish Reinhart.

I think making him dress for the game and then sit him was a wrong decision. The coach could have just made him a healthy scratch.

I think making him dress for the game and then sit him was a wrong decision. The coach could have just made him a healthy scratch.
- sparky

I'm pretty sure the decision to dress him was in case of injury. Seeing that Okposo was out, and I believe they didnt have any more callups available, they did what they had to do in this situation. I too called for him to sit in the press box and dress another player, but I dont think that was an option.

Being late for a meeting, if that was the case, would have been equally effective sitting him for the first period, maybe half the game, but it seemed harsh to sit the bench the whole game. Embarrassing to him and the extra work the team endured down a man

The NHL is a young man's game, right? Rules are rules and they are not negotiable. The stars and kids must be held to the same standard as the grizzled fourth line vet and seventh D-man.

Unless you're Crosby though.