Yahoo Sports Sabres Rising Star Named Team's Top Sleeper
The Buffalo Sabres are entering the 2024-25 season expecting to break their 13-year playoff drought. For that to occur, they will need not only their top players to perform at their highest levels but also their young players to take steps forward.
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One intriguing Sabres player heading into next season is Zach Benson. The 2023 first-round pick performed quite nicely as an 18-year-old during his rookie year (he turned 19 in May), posting 11 goals and 30 points in 71 games. However, even after his solid first NHL season, he is not necessarily being discussed a lot heading into the new campaign. Because of this, The Hockey News Fantasy's Jason Chen named Benson as the Sabres' top sleeper for fantasy hockey this year.
Here is what Chen said about Benson as a potential sleeper:
"Benson is almost completely off the fantasy radar even though he's slated to play a top-six role, ranked 627th in Yahoo's pre-season rankings. Among Sabres forwards last season, Benson trailed only Thompson in CF% and ranked third behind Peterka and Casey Mittelstadt in xGF% with a sub-1.000 PDO, according to naturalstattrick.com. Translation: Benson could've scored many more points if he wasn't one of the unluckiest players on the team. "
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It is a bit surprising to see Benson being ranked so low in fantasy rankings. As noted by Chen, there is a good chance that Benson will play in the Sabres' top six this season. The Sabres did not land a true top-six winger this offseason after buying out Jeff Skinner, so Benson has a golden opportunity to get a more prominent role.
Benson also demonstrated at the junior level that he can be a dominant offensive player. In his final season in the WHL with the Winnipeg Ice in 2022-23, he had 36 goals and 98 points in 60 games. It is just a matter of translating more of his offense to the NHL level in 2024-25.
Nevertheless, seeing what kind of campaign Benson has for the Sabres this upcoming season will be fascinating. Now that he has a year of NHL experience under his belt, it would not be particularly surprising if he hit new offensive totals in 2024-25.
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