FLAMES RETOOL TRACKER: The case to continue auditioning Connor Zary at centre
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Zary always has been high on hockey sense, a big part of the appeal when he was welcomed as a first-round pick in 2020.
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With an assist to Flames skating coach Danielle Fujita, he now seems to have enough wheels to handle the all-over-the-ice assignments that fall to the middle-man.
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He is both confident and tenacious as a puck-carrier and that can be a killer combo. Doesn't he remind you a little of Kadri with his willingness to attack on the rush and his ability to leave a defender looking like his laces are tied together?
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Before a knee-on-knee collision in early January in Anaheim, Zary was starting to climb the Go-To Guy rankings for the Flames. He was doing so at centre.
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At the time of his injury, he was third on the team scoring charts, on pace to pot 20 goals. Ultimately limited to 54 outings, he wound up finishing with 13.
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'I know I have so much to offer with my ability and what I can do and how I can keep growing my game,' Zary said in his end-of-season interview. 'Obviously, I think I can produce more. But at the end of the day, I think if I played even 70 games out of 82, I think I'm a 20-goal guy and I'm a 50-point guy.
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'It's disappointing to not reach those goals that I had set for myself, but there are also a lot of positives knowing that I went through a lot and I was able to kind of come out on the other side of that with nothing really serious going on in those injuries.'
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As they search to upgrade at centre, some have suggested Conroy should try to bring back Bennett as an unrestricted free agent.
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Remember him? Of course you do.
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Bennett spent his first six seasons at the Saddledome. Now 28, he had his name engraved on the Stanley Cup last summer, was a sparkplug for Team Canada at the 4 Nations Face-Off and is leading the Panthers in goals (5), hits (45) and enemies made (all of Toronto) in this current playoff run.
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He's also something of a cautionary tale in Calgary, one that applies to Zary.
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Before he was traded to Florida in 2021, the Flames never really figured out if Bennett could do his thing at centre. He mostly played the wing.
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While they're different players, and while you could make a case that Bennett needed a change of scenery to reach his full potential, the organization can't repeat this mistake.
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