Not bad for a B.C. Hockey League Victoria Grizzlies player passed over until the fifth round of the NHL draft and overlooked entirely in the WHL bantam draft.
Jamie Benn continues to defy his relatively obscure start in the game. The Central Saanich product and Dallas Stars captain was named Saturday as one of three finalists for the Hart Memorial Trophy as 2015-16 NHL MVP, with Sidney Crosby of the Pittsburgh Penguins and Patrick Kane of the Chicago Blackhawks. It is considered the NHL’s highest individual honour.
Few saw this coming when Benn was playing Junior B with the Peninsula Panthers.
“Jamie was no better that year than a lot of 16-year-olds who came up through Peninsula,” recalled Peter Zubersky, the Panthers GM then and now.
“But when I saw Jamie hitting everybody in sight in a Game 7 playoff against Kerry Park, and crying his eyes out after we lost, I saw a will to compete like few others.”
Benn used that drive to surpass expectations and has fashioned himself the prototype power-forward of his generation as he again skates into uncharted territory for Island hockey. Benn last season became the first Island player to win the Art Ross Trophy as NHL scoring champion.
“I’m excited Jamie is up for the Hart. I thought he was top-10 in the NHL. Now he goes to top-three,” Zubersky said.
“He has put Victoria on the map in the game of hockey.”
Benn got the Hart MVP finalist nod this season with an NHL runner-up 89 points and third-best 41 goals in 82 games, both career bests, as he led the Stars to their first divisional crown in a decade and first Western Conference championship in 13 years.
“It’s always part of being a professional hockey player and the higher you go, the more you’ll get,” Benn told Times Colonist sports reporter Mario Annicchiarico last week, after he had been selected to represent the Canadian national team in the current online voting for the EA Sports NHL 17 video game cover.
“For myself, it was an eye-opener going to the NHL awards last year, and being around a bunch of superstars at the Olympics [as a Winter Games gold medallist for Canada at Sochi 2014]. That has brought me out of my comfort zone and I’m real comfortable with it right now.”
But if the Hart nomination was the good news Saturday for Benn, the bad was the 4-1 loss at home that gave the St. Louis Blues a 3-2 lead in their Western Conference semifinal playoff series.
Meanwhile, Benn’s challengers for the Hart trophy also have strong cases. Kane won the NHL scoring title with 106 points, including 46 goals, and two-time previous Hart winner Crosby was third in NHL scoring with 85 points.
The 26-year-old Benn is looking to become just the third player from B.C. to win the Hart since the trophy’s inception in 1923-24, hoping to join last year’s winner Carey Price from Anahim Lake and 2000-01 choice Joe Sakic, from Burnaby.
This season’s race to the Hart is considered a toss-up between Benn, Kane and Crosby. It is voted on by NHL beat writers. Benn was also announced earlier as a nominee for the Ted Lindsay Award, along with Kane and Washington Capitals goaltender Braden Holtby, as the NHL MVP as selected by the players themselves.
The NHL awards ceremony is on June 22 in Las Vegas at The Joint at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino.
— With a file from Mario Annicchiarico, TC
