Shortly before the Toronto Maple Leafs began their regular season, Simon Benoit found himself back in a familiar position.
Shortly before the Toronto Maple Leafs began their regular season, Simon Benoit found himself back in a familiar position.
The 27-year-old has played almost solely on the left since arriving in Toronto in 2023, however, entering this season, Maple Leafs head coach Craig Berube wanted to experiment with him on the right side of Oliver Ekman-Larsson.
"(Ekman-Larsson) has got some good offensive abilities, right? And I felt like on the right side, at times, it’s more so in the offensive zone where it’s a little tough for a D to get the puck off the wall and things like that to create more offense," Berube said early in training camp.
"So that was really the only thing we were looking at was that side of it. If it doesn’t work, it’s an easy switch. OEL’s played right before. But that was what we were thinking."
Benoit missed a good chunk of Maple Leafs camp with an upper-body injury, but returned to skating with the team on Sept. 26, wearing a non-contact jersey. He made his pre-season debut on the right of Ekman-Larsson on Oct. 2 against the Detroit Red Wings.
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Benoit finished the game, a 3-1 loss, with 16:23 of ice time, the least amount among Toronto's defensemen. According to NaturalStatTrick, the duo had a 24.39 expected goals-for percentage in nearly 10 minutes of ice time at five-on-five.
Five days later, Benoit found himself back on the left side of Ekman-Larsson. And he remained there for the rest of training camp and their home-opening 5-2 win against the Montreal Canadiens on Wednesday.
The pair had a 91.54 expected goals-for percentage at five-on-five in 10:54 of ice time together, according to NaturalStatTrick.com.
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Even during practice on Friday, Benoit was skating on the left of Ekman-Larsson, which suggests the experiment has ended. However, Berube wasn't ready to call it quits on the trial run, even though Benoit's returned to his regular spot.
"I think they kind of switch off, to be honest with you," Berube said on Friday. "Benny didn't have a lot of camp time. I've seen OEL on the right a lot, so that's the reason I went with it. It could change."
As to when an alteration could be made remains a mystery.
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