Zach Benson, the NHL’s next great Stanley Cup playoff pest

BUFFALO, N.Y. — Zach Benson is a hockey participant you hate to like. Or, like to hate — relying on the place you are lined up towards him.

It’s a sophisticated dynamic even for Benson’s Buffalo Sabres teammates, till they bear in mind the NHL’s inheritor obvious to the high of the pest pedestal is definitely on their aspect.

“In pretty much every practice, I want to punch him in the face, too,” goaltender Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen acknowledged. “The worst part of [going against him] is that he’s an unbelievably skilled player who can also play on the edge of that rat-like game. That’s just pissing you off even more, when it’s an actually great player who is fighting hard for every puck, and scoring goals, but he can also do all that extra stuff to get under your skin. It’s annoying.”

Consider Benson unbothered by his burgeoning status. The 20-year-old winger has cultivated a pesky presence on the ice for years, however is probably solely now gaining leaguewide consideration for his experience.

“All I can say is — finally,” Sabres captain Rasmus Dahlin stated of Benson being acknowledged. “People really get to see who he is. He’s the ultimate teammate. He’s the guy you want to have on your team. He just brings great energy, he’s got that edge to his game, he reads the game very well and he’s got a lot of skill. I’m so happy we have him.”

Benson is decidedly much less beloved exterior of Buffalo. He started producing headlines in Game 6 of the Sabres’ Eastern Conference first-round playoff sequence towards Boston on May 1. When Buffalo was up 4-1 late in the third interval and the Bruins had been teetering on elimination, Benson tripped up Boston defenseman Charlie McAvoy whereas making an attempt to negate what was basically a meaningless icing name with 90 seconds left.

After getting again on his skates, McAvoy took subject with Benson and delivered a two-handed slash to Benson’s proper arm. Benson could not masks his laughter reacting to the more and more heated McAvoy, and slipped simply out from below the pile of Bruins and Sabres who gathered to scrum round him towards the glass.

Benson took his two-minute tripping penalty from there in stride, whereas McAvoy was handed a five-minute main for slashing and a 10-minute recreation misconduct. The NHL then introduced that McAvoy would have an in-person hearing Monday pertaining to the incident.

If there was any query about Benson feeling regret over including insult to harm for the Bruins in the last moments of their season, he isn’t sorry.

“I really don’t care [what anyone thinks],” Benson stated. “I’m just playing the game.”

And Buffalo is all about it. Benson recorded two targets and three factors in the six-game sequence towards Boston, and upped the ante with a two-point exhibiting in Buffalo’s 4-1 rout of Montreal in Game 1 of their convention semifinals sequence.

It was a trademark Benson efficiency — flying round the internet, making performs to arrange Buffalo’s first objective (by linemate Josh Doan), and serving to draw penalties that gave the Sabres’ energy play a brand new life. After struggling to get going at the finish of the common season and the first spherical, Buffalo’s energy play scored a number of markers in Game 1 — for the first time since March 31.

Benson is, briefly, a complete nightmare for the opponent.

“If I was on the other side, I wouldn’t want to be coaching against him,” Sabres coach Lindy Ruff stated. “I thought his effort [in Game 1] was tremendous. He had a heck of a series [against Boston] and now he’s off to a great start here, and that line [with Doan and Josh Norris] gave us a great night. [Zach’s] effort on a lot of different plays made a difference in the game.”

RARE IS THE PLAYER who not solely embraces being disliked however enjoys it. Benson matches that mould. He’s an “insect” on the ice, based on Ruff — and that may be one in every of the nicer phrases used to explain Benson’s type. For the report, he says that his mother prefers the “rat” moniker.

And it was Benson’s mother and father who inspired his type of play — together with work ethic first — that has led to comparisons with acclaimed antagonists equivalent to Brad Marchand and Matthew Tkachuk.

“It’s always just come naturally to me, since I was young,” Benson stated of his method. “My dad has always liked those [frustrating] players. When your parents have a favorite kind of player, you’re probably going to start watching them, just getting habits from those guys. I just always wanted to be hard to play against. That was a big thing my parents wanted me to be and to play like and it’s always been there since I was a little guy.”

Sabres ahead Beck Malenstyn has watched Benson’s evolution carefully, even exterior of the NHL season. He and Benson are each from British Columbia and have skated collectively throughout the summers in Vancouver. Malenstyn is sort of 10 years older than Benson, and nonetheless can not help marveling at the method he has doggedly pursued constructing an on-ice model.

“Benny is one of a kind,” Malenstyn stated with a sly smile. “Realistically, it’s a combination of things. It’s his tenacious play on the ice; he’s in every single puck battle. And then it’s his relentless pressure. It’s frustrating when pucks are being stripped from you and he does such an amazing job of that where he starts to plant that seed of frustration in defenders.

“And then he is extraordinarily gifted at, after the whistle, with the ability to simply do sufficient to not find yourself in the penalty field at the unsuitable time, however nonetheless trigger some stuff on the different aspect and bait them a bit.”

That requires more than just being a bothersome trash talker. Benson’s similar predecessors have shown there’s an art to all the madness.

“I do not essentially know he desires individuals to imagine that,” goaltender Alex Lyon stated with amusing. “But he positively is aware of what he is doing. And for him to be a 20-year-old doing that? For him to be excelling on this scenario? It’s extraordinarily spectacular. Playoffs are humorous as a result of we see that man each day and it is simply the first time perhaps different individuals are attending to have that [Benson] expertise.”

Malenstyn said he “needs” for the verbal capabilities Benson can exhibit against any team, with an assurance beyond his years and a willingness to go all-in while smartly avoiding negative consequences.

“I may by no means consider something to say like he does,” Malenstyn said. “Those are guys that know precisely what buttons to push. It’s not malicious. They simply take pleasure in that form of confrontation and have just a little enjoyable with it.

“Basically, Benny’s exhausting for the opposition. I don’t expect that to be any different moving forward.”

THE SABRES KNEW EXACTLY what they needed bringing Benson on board, and he has delivered.

The staff chosen him No. 13 in the 2023 NHL draft after he’d produced a staggering 36 targets and 98 factors in 60 video games with the WHL’s Winnipeg Ice in 2022-23. Benson was undersized at 5-foot-10 however transitioned instantly to the league and racked up 11 targets and 30 factors in 71 video games as a rookie in 2023-24.

Then, Benson was nonetheless targeted on getting his ft moist versus courting favor — or a scarcity of it — with villainy. But as he started settling into his third-line slot — and was freshly armed with an elevated understanding of the NHL and its gamers — that fondness for ruffling feathers revealed itself amongst his different rising skills.

“I’ve always had that kind of desire to [needle] guys,” he stated. “When you’re on the ice, it’s a different world. I’ve always been told that. It’s nice to be friendly, and obviously you want to be a good person off the ice. But when you get on the ice, it’s not the same place. And usually the best players are the ones who can change with that and play physical. They can be a d— on the ice and a nice guy off it. I learned that, and it’s been ingrained in me.”

Case in level: Benson’s current journey to a grocery retailer. In December 2023, Benson instructed ESPN that one in every of his go-to off-day actions was strolling round a few of the Buffalo-area malls. The wide-eyed rookie talked about how he was acknowledged as soon as by a fan and it was an “extremely cool” expertise.

Fast-forward to 2026 when the Sabres are on their first postseason run after ending a historic 14-year playoff drought — and anonymity is strikingly arduous to keep up.

“So, I was on the phone with my mom last night, and we were talking,” he stated Tuesday. “And she’s like, ‘Oh my gosh, have you been on Instagram?’ And she’s going, ‘Blah, blah, blah; this [stuff is crazy].’ And it’s because I went to the grocery store two days ago, and it was the craziest thing I’ve ever seen. I couldn’t go down one aisle without someone asking for a picture. It was the longest I’ve ever been in a grocery store.

“I’m not a affected person man, normally. But it is simply so cool to see little children with smiles on their faces and freaking out after they get to see you. I bear in mind being that age and doing the very same factor. It actually is a fairly particular factor now that you do not need to take without any consideration or be the man letting anybody down. I relish it, and soak it up.”

Benson speaks as though his own youth is so far in the past — when in reality he still can’t legally order a alcoholic drink until his birthday this Tuesday. That adolescent energy is part of what makes Benson so popular in Buffalo’s dressing room — even when he’s something of a gnat there, too.

“In a variety of methods, he is the similar in right here that he’s on the market [on the ice],” Malenstyn said. “He can get you in an argument over something, simply to get you going, simply to get amusing out of you. You’ll be having a completely regular dialog about one thing, after which he may simply decide the different aspect to see what you are going to say. But we love having him on our staff. He’s so particular in that method.”

Dahlin became familiar with how Benson is truly one of one when Dahlin and fiancée, Carolina, invited Benson to move in with them when he first came to Buffalo. It’s possible Dahlin is still recovering from the experience.

“He lived at my home when he bought right here. He did a variety of bizarre stuff,” Dahlin said. “But he is simply maturing each day. It’s been unbelievable to comply with his journey and he is solely going to get higher. I completely love being his teammate.”

Ah — weird stuff? Such as?

“I should not have stated that” Dahlin demurred, saying without saying there’s more to Benson than meets the eye.

After all, it takes a type of unicorn to be a player like Benson in the modern NHL. The game has evolved to be so fast, and requiring such skill, that simply being a nuisance wouldn’t be enough to stay in the lineup. Ruff has witnessed those shifts from his own playing days in the 1970s and ’80s right through a coaching career that began in the early ’90s. Benson is a sort of hybrid, combining multiple elements from where the rat role started to where it is now.

“There’s the pest that is actual annoying. And there is a pest that is actually arduous to play towards,” Ruff said. “And I feel he is all that as an actual arduous participant to play towards. He performs the recreation the proper method. He has the puck rather a lot, he can rating. And he is annoying as a result of he will get to the internet all the time. He will get to the puck, he is the first contact. And if he isn’t first contact, he is throughout you to attempt to get it again. And then he is bought that smirk on his face that irritates you, too, I suppose, as an opposition participant. It makes me smile, however I feel it annoys different individuals.”

To that, Luukkonen can only say, preach.

“As a goalie too, I can inform even with out enjoying towards him formally that he is so annoying,” Luukkonen said. “You see how he is actually expert in entrance of the internet. He is aware of when to take a success, when to play well, to not get known as for something however nonetheless create some frustration and possibly he’s going to attain a objective [from in tight] or one thing with out it being [a penalty]. It’s throwing different groups off a bit as a result of it is simply so annoying.”

It didn’t take long for Tanner Pearson to recognize in Benson what he’d seen in other players of similar style over the course of a 15-year career that includes a Stanley Cup championship with the Los Angeles Kings in 2014. Pearson joined the the Sabres in a trade with Winnipeg in March, and though he hasn’t shared the ice with Benson much in games, to Pearson there’s no mistaking what value a player like Benson can bring to put his team over the top.

“I do not need to say there’s only a rat-like factor to him,” Pearson said, “as a result of he is at all times so aggressive with the whole lot he does. It’s a practice-like-you-play sort of scenario. He simply would not cease, and he annoys all people, and he is so fortunately doing it at the similar time.

“Guys like him just don’t care. At the end of the day, he gets players off their games. And if you’re thinking about him on the ice, then I think he’s already won the mental game. And he does it so effectively. Just thinking about what he does is annoying.”

THERE WILL COME A DAY when Benson has to hold up his skates. It’s attainable then he’ll pay his mother and father again for his or her assist by taking on the household carnival enterprise.

Benson’s pre-NHL résumé consists of working for his mother and father, Darcy and Jaclyn, behind the scenes of West Coast Amusements, a touring operation that travels round Western Canada. Benson spent a few of his teenage years manning the mini-donut stand, and serving to arrange the greater than 40 sights.

Playing professional hockey virtually cannot examine to the thrill of what Benson bought to expertise at the moment together with his father, and grandfather particularly. It was foundational to who he has grow to be — with advantages past entry to doubtlessly limitless fried dough.

“We got to live in an RV for months, and every summer, we’d get out of school a month early, so that was a perk,” Benson stated. “And then we just traveled. It was honestly something that I’ll never forget. I got to see [first-hand] how hard my grandpa and my dad were working. It’s something I’ll take with me forever.”

Benson’s grandfather handed the enterprise to Darcy lately, so there’s not a lot time to attach with him anymore in the summer time whereas the carnival is touring. But Benson’s dad will come spend a number of weeks with him in the winter, speaking store, and possibly stating another NHL gamers from whom Benson can proceed taking inspiration.

“He grew up a die-hard [Edmonton] Oilers fan, and he’d at all times proven me guys from on the market [to emulate],” Benson stated. “He’d be speaking about Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, and he actually preferred [Kailer] Yamamoto when he was there because he’s a smaller guy too and was always a pest. He always liked those types of guys, and so we still look for ones like them to [expand] my game.”

The method Benson goes, it will not be lengthy earlier than up-and-comers are figuring out him as an affect. What Benson does won’t ever be for everybody — it is a dedication all its personal to savor being despised. But there’s one overarching optimistic.

When achieved appropriately, most everybody can agree there is no one higher to share a bench with than Benson.

“He’s probably the player that across the board, you’d hate to play against him but you love to have on your team, right?” Malenstyn stated. “There’s so many guys that pride themselves on having that [trait] about them. I love watching his game. He’s so underrated because of how hard he works. But when you’re really able to watch the small area plays that he does in those puck battles, in those corners, some of the things he can pull off with the puck is truly incredible.

“All that, and he is below your pores and skin the complete time. It’s simply great.”