The Sheet with Jeff Marek - On the Sheet: Shayna Goldman on Zach Benson's Comparable's, MTL/BUF Goaltending, Game 7 Expectations, and more

Episode Date: May 18, 2026

Shayna Goldman joins the show to break down all the biggest storylines surrounding Game 7 between the Buffalo Sabresand Montreal Canadiens. The conversation dives into Zach Benson’s NHL comparables, what makes his game so effective, and how his development could shape Buffalo’s future. They also take a closer look at the goaltending battle between Montreal and Buffalo, which team holds the edge heading into the biggest game of the season, key players to watch, X-factors that could decide the series, and the pressure surrounding a winner-take-all matchup.SHOUTOUT TO OUR SPONSORS!!👍🏼 Fan Duel: https://www.fanduel.com/👍🏼 Ninja: https://www.sharkninja.ca/ninja-crispi-pro-6-in-1-countertop-glass-air-fryer-rose-quartz/AS101CRS.html?utm_source=Meta&utm_medium=Paid+Social&utm_campaign=H1NinjaCrispi&utm_content=NinjaEN&dwvar_AS101CRS_color=cdb9b8Reach out to [e-mail] to connect with our Sales Team and discuss opportunities to partner with us!If you liked this, check out:🚨 OTT - Coming in Hot Sens | https://www.youtube.com/c/thewallyandmethotshow🚨 TOR - LeafsNation | https://www.youtube.com/@theleafsnation401🚨 EDM - OilersNation | https://www.youtube.com/@Oilersnationdotcom🚨 VAN - CanucksArmy | https://www.youtube.com/@Canucks_Army🚨 CGY - FlamesNation | https://www.youtube.com/@FNBarnBurner🚨 Daily Faceoff Fantasy & Betting | www.youtube.com/@DFOFantasyandBetting____________________________________________________________________________________________Connect with us on ⬇️Link Tree: https://linktr.ee/daily_faceoff💻 Website: https://www.dailyfaceoff.com🐦 Follow on twitter: https://x.com/DailyFaceoff💻 Follow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dailyfaceoffDaily Faceoff Merch:https://nationgear.ca/collections/daily-faceoffReach out to [e-mail] to connect with our Sales Team and discuss opportunities to partner with us! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

She's one of our favorites, and as we always do, we kick off every conversation with Shannon by getting a pickle update. I was thinking in the history of hockey, there's been no one named pickle, like in the NHL. There is in the OHL a center for the sarniest thing by the name of Ben Pickle. There was a very famous New York Ranger, famous because he got beaten up by Rocket Richard, a guy with the name of Bob Dill. Rocket Richard beat him up so badly. they referred to it as the pickling of Bob Dill, but that's what I've got for you for pickles and hockey. Do you have a pickle update from elsewhere,

be it alcoholic beverages or snacks? Well, that's a brilliant headline that they came up with. This was the most you intro I could have ever imagined. Oh, my God. Yes, yes, we have an update. I updated you. We did try the pickle PBRs. Love it.

How was it? The more I drank it, the less I liked it. It was a lot of garlic. It was a lot of garlic in there. So garlic beer. Yeah, I like a garlic pickle. And this is like the perfect way I think to explain it. If you're at a picnic, you're having a nice sandwich.

It has cold cuts and pickles on and things like that. This is the perfect drink to go with it. But in a vacuum, you have it on its own. And you're like, I like the dill, the sweetness of it. All of that's fine. You add in the garlic and the garlic aftertaste. And you're like, okay, this is. This is too much for me.

Okay, I understand it's a PBR. It's not the highest in beer. That's not my issue here. It's the garlic after taste. Way too much. How many did you give a chance to? Or did you make your mind up after one? So tried one.

And then the next day we had friends over. So we like to get all of these weird drinks. And whatever we don't like, we're like, we're going to pawn off on the world. We're going to make everyone else try them. But we're idiots and we'll try them a second time. So I did try the next day a second time. And I liked it less. I kept lowering my rating.

So this weekend, I'll give it another shot, I'm sure. I have someone who wants to try it coming over this weekend. So I'll give it one more taste, but not my favorite. Rather just pour, like, actual pickle juice and a pickle sweet. In, like, a bud light, that is a refreshing drink. So make your own is better than what's happening in the PBR right now with the pickles. All right, well, stay tuned for our update next week. In the meantime, do you have a thought on the uniqueness of Rasmus Dahlin that we've never seen a play, never seen a defender, Mary,

high skill, which Dahlene has, and an element of snot in his game that we don't see at that level. We don't see it from Hughes. We don't see it from McCar. We don't. Werensky, go right down the list of elite level defensemen in the NHL. I really do think, like, he's a rare bird. Like, I don't, I'm, rack in my brain.

Eddie Shore was dirty, but, like, he's not, like, annoying, like, bamboo shoots under the fingernails, like, Rasmus Dahlia. Like, there have been, like, nasty defensemen. Chris Pronger was a nasty bit of business. but I wouldn't say that he had like a rat element about him. Like this guy just drives people crazy. And normally that's forwards. That's forwards.

We don't see it out of a defenseman. You ever thought on that one? Yeah, like you expect that out of Zach Benson. You're getting that out of Zach Benson in Buffalo with. Aline, it's a quieter approach, right? And it's like it's slowly gaining more traction of who can draw, not just penalties against him, but who is drawing a suspension? Yeah.

After dealing with the rest of Stalin, it's multiple times now. So I think there's a uniqueness to it because of the quiet nature of it. Like we don't know what he's saying. We're not seeing anything super obvious in the moment a lot of the time. It's just you're seeing everybody go wild after the fact. So I think was it doc who mentioned Drew Dowdy before? I guess that one. But I think Dowdy's a little louder with it.

Like you know that's a part of it. You see him smirking afterwards. You see him involved. And I think we also, when it was like the Matthew Kichuk, Drew Dowdy of those Kings Flames days, a little different. here. I think this one's much more subtle to it. But like, do I think it's fun? And Ed's a bit of spice to every game he's in absolutely like, I'm here for that. I am too. I'm glad you mentioned Zach Benson. So here's my question. I was asking Gregor this last night on rundown. Is he going to be the next

Corey Perry or the next Brad Marchand? I don't think Corey Perry is a fair comparison to make because of like the physical attributes are so different. The high level. No, but here's the thing. Like with because he's got great hands. Like, no, Corey Perry is like a beanstalk. He's got him by way of height. But as far as like he's annoying to play against, like Benson's miserable to play against.

And that like poke behind the knees kind of miserable. Facewash. We don't see face washes anymore, by the way. But like he's the kind of guy that does stuff like that. And marries that with like a high level of production, which I think we're going to see for the next however many years at Zach Benson. And then Marchant thing is obvious.

stature. Yeah. The Marchand thing we're going to think of because it's the Rack King Energy, the short stature, but also there's stylistic trends that are similar. So I looked at this last week when I wrote about it and was going through his comps by the number. And I was a little surprised Martian didn't come up in terms of similarity score in, you know, that top percentage. Yeah.

So it's because we filter down by age. We go six months, older, six months younger, right? Because what a player is doing at that point in their career is very important when you're trying to pinpoint their trajectory going forward. you can't just say, let's compare a 21-year-old to a 24-year-old, right? Marchand didn't hit his stride until a couple of years later than Benson. Benson's a little bit ahead of the curve. So if you take out the age filters, Marciaan does come up as a comp,

and then once, you know, he's there, he's so effective after I'd say those first two seasons. So that trajectory is definitely there if Benson stays on this track because there's similarities. It's the two-way game. I don't think he gets enough credit for how good he is defensively. He's great in transition. He's a sneaky good passer. super smart player, which I know we hear, you know, the comments of, oh, he's so dumb and things like that.

But, like, outright reads the plays really well, also spots those trigger points if not creates his own to be jumping at plays and forcing, you know, takeaways and constantly hounding the puck. A lot of Brad Marsh and for those reasons, the other comp that came up, the highest one on his list, though, by the numbers at this point in his career with Seth Jarvis, which I love the comp. when we did player tears, someone had said to us that Hagel and Jarvis are little assholes who play the game the way it's supposed to be played. And I think that's a perfect way to describe a guy like Don, who is on that Brandon Hagel path

and Benson, who's very similar to Seth Jarvis. They're two-way impacts at this point in their careers, plus the physical attributes are so similar. So high comp on the list would be a really great path to him to follow. Anything in between, obviously, is a home run for the Sabres too. Because it's that third line mentality, he has that dog in him, but he also is true top six skill. It's marvelous to watch.

Playoffs always reveal this, right? And you start to see what players are really made of. And some guys run and hide, some wilt and others succeed. Regardless of what happens tonight. Like, we're going to look at this and say, okay, this is the emergence of Donne and Benson, specifically with the Buffalo Sabres. But did you think this thing was over? Three to one, Montreal, Olao, Leo, Le, here we go.

Larry Robinson's bringing out the torch to play. is lit on fire. It's incredible. They're loving it in Montreal. The goalie's hard to hit. It was originally three goals on three shots. Generously, the, the NHL saved him the embarrassment of a safe percentage of bagels and added an extra shot, which got him up to 250. Lion gets chased and in comes Ukapakalukinan, who puts up the proverbial wall. But before that, it's three to one of the goalies getting the hook. Did you think this thing is over? Done. Yeah, who wouldn't?

Who wouldn't? But hold on, let me go back to your first point. With Don and Benson and this being their coming out party, what I think makes this so much more important is everything they're doing. Like we look at comps, it's all based on regular season play. The playoffs, I think we can get out of control with when players have breakouts. In their cases specifically, it just adds more substance to what we're seeing and adds more like weight behind it. So that's a real plus.

But going into it, game six, you know, you think about it. You go, well, they're in Montreal and the vibes. And it's like, but they lost in Montreal in round one. and then one on the road. So I was torn on that. I thought they were going to shake up the lines. I actually did agree with breaking up Benson and Donne because you know they work together.

Well, you know they work together apart. And they're the spark that the rest of the lineup was missing. I didn't agree with going with Alex Lyon, though. I didn't think he'd have that bad of a start. And when he did, it did feel like this is quickly getting out of control because it's not just that the goaltending is a problem. The Sabres looked very panicked in their own zone. And they just looked overwhelmed out there.

It looked like the Canadians had a lot of pressure as they're going up, 3-0. No, they're not getting shots, but they're in control. And, you know, it felt like they had their grasp on this game and we're starting to take over. Did I think we were going to see the Sabres rebound in that way? Honestly, no. I really didn't, based on what we've seen so far in this series and just how poor of a start it was. It was such a turnaround. It was so dominant.

You can see that when you're watching it, you could look at the charts and you can see it, right? Like there's an expected goal chart out there. I know I tweeted out from Moneypuck. And it shows this, you know, little progression. They're tight together. You're seeing where the goals are. And all of a sudden, it explodes for the sabres. Going into the third period, Tage Thompson's individual, expected goal total, in all situations,

it was better than the Canadians as a whole. It was absolutely ridiculous, the split that we happen here. Okay, let's throw down on a couple of things here. How much do we chalk this up to? And again, full credit to the Buffalo Sabres for doing what they did. One of the reasons my playoffs is, is I think at least somehow instructive. Buffalo's given every reason to quit.

We've seen teams quit before, especially, like, what you try to do in any series is make the other team quit. And there's always moments in a series where a team will say, we knew we had them here. Like, at this point,

they're thinking about golf. At this point, they're thinking about, you know, locker clean. And there's moments in series where you know you have them. Buffalo Sabres had that moment. And they didn't.

like that's massive for the future. Even if they lose tonight, which could happen. We know how this series goes. I think that was huge for them. But how much do we chalk this up to? Dobish has never played this mini games in a row before. He's never had like a run like this and he was do a clunker.

Do we just look at this one and say, that's a goalie clunker? No, actually don't. Um, do I think he was perfect the last two games to open? No. Do I think the workload could be a part of it? Absolutely. And that's why sometimes you go, okay, maybe you do give him the hook just to let him like reset and rest because this is a lot. He played a ton down the stretch. He was absolutely incredible. Like no doubt about that has been really good so far this postseason. But when you look at the way the game was being played in front of the net for both teams, right? And the way the Sabers just took control, I don't put the loss, the game six loss on him. And obviously we'll see how it goes here. And the fact that he doesn't get that time. to rest at all. But then again, sometimes that's not the best thing, right? Like, if you let the adrenaline die down at all, it might be hard to dial it back up if you had this massive break. If you're a young player, I think if you're a season team, like say the hurricanes or, you know,

even the abs on the western side of it, it's a little bit different here. You know the difference between going and, you know, keeping the energy up. You know how to stop and go a little bit more here. But it's not, it hasn't been perfect from Dobesh. I don't think he's really been what I expected at in the series, to be honest, because I expected him to be a little bit more disruptive against the Sabres 4 check. I was expecting that to be the storyline here, not these early starts back and forth goals galore. Like, I didn't see that one happening at all. But I mean, that's what makes that's why we play the game, right? That's what makes it interesting. So we'll see what we get from him tonight. Because if the Canadians play a tighter game in front of him, I expect him to stand tall.

If he has a total clunkering, the team's playing well in front of him, then I think that argument has more weight, but I'm not at that point yet. Okay, let's bracket this conversation for a second. You mentioned that West and Colorado specifically. Carolina waits the winners of this one. We'll finally get the Eastern Conference final going here on Thursday. Meantime, Wednesday, it's the Avalanche and the Vegas Golden Knights. It's having a conversation with someone over the weekend

because the last few days I've been talking a lot about efficiency. You always talk about this. Like teams that find the inefficiencies around the NHB. shall exploit it, sign the players to good contracts, and all of a sudden, these add up over the course of years, and then voila, wow, how come Colorado has all this depth? Wow, look at all the depth that Carolina has. Wow, it's incredible. No, if you're paying attention, you see these small moves that eventually add up. Yeah, I pay attention when you talk, Shana. And we're talking about a couple of players, and we're talking about Parker Kelly specifically, and that contract that he has,

which is just fantastic, given the production that Colorado is getting out of Parker Kelly. And this person said to me, ideally, you know, teams, you know, should go out and try to find their own version of Parker Kelly. And maybe Colorado has another one here that another team should maybe look at offer sheeting in Jack Drury at 4.6, what only costs his second round draft pick. But then part of me says, I don't know that Colorado lets it get there. Jack Drury. And the real answer is, you find another version of Jack Drury and sign Drac Drury to the Parker Kelly contract at 1.6 million a season. Easier said than done, but teams like Colorado always do it.

And teams like Carolina always do it. And what's the common denominator or, or Shana, what's the secret sauce that both these two teams have? They have people that find inefficiencies all over the place. Yeah, they Yeah, they're two really smart front offices And that's the key of it A lot of times you would say

It's so much easier to just get the established version of this player We see it all the time in the postseason It happens more often than not with depth players In the top six guys, right? It's not, oh, go find your own Pavl Dorofia Or go find your own Arturie Lachinan It's go find your own Blake Coleman

Go find your own Gianni Gord Or overpay and bring them in yourself And we see how that goes Because a lot of the times that these teams have them they have them in their prime of their careers. You want the back half of whatever contract they're on or you want to sign them to a huge deal because they have the battle-tested playoff mentality

or Stanley Cup brings to show for it, depending on which player we're talking about. You can do that. But the best way to do it is to find your own version of that, right? Like you think of years past, it's guys like Connor Brown that come up as the, you know, was that the next Blake Coleman or Brandon Hagel finding him who was a hidden gem at the time for the Blackhawks.

In this case, I would say, if you're the abs, you let a team overpay. You absolutely love a team overpay because you have other big contracts to balance out, right? The NACIS extension kicking in McCar's next deal, whatever. Other deals are coming into place. And it's not like they have a ton of entry-level talent to balance everything out. You're going to have guys like Gavin Brinley playing bigger roles and they're going to help balance out the cause. But you can't be sinking money into your bottom six.

You have to be so careful about it. So when teams want to pay a bottom six player, you know, four plus million and say, that's fine because we got someone we know is battle tested. You could do that. but it's probably going to cost you in some other way. And if any team's going to find that replacement, it's absolutely Colorado. It's absolutely Carolina.

And I would say even, you know, Vegas to an extent has done a good job with it. Almost every player they bring into their team and into their system on defense and upfront has done well. I think Rasmus Anderson is like kind of the outlier. Yes, he's been better in the playoffs, but he hasn't been up to the level. I think we all expected him to just jump in and all of a sudden. It's like, yep, that's a top six guy right there. So yeah, if you're Colorado, you kind of just roll with the punches of that and then find

your own replacement. because they are way too good at spotting those players. There's a discipline in Colorado. Put it this way. They let go of Miko Ranton over $500,000. Like there's that kind of discipline. Like this is the number. This is what works for us.

This is how we're still going to be well compensated. But this is what makes sense to us. And we're not going past that. Which is why. And I'll swing this back to Buffalo on this note. It's really going to be interesting to see how much discipline Yarmou Kekulaynan has around Alex Tuck. Yeah. That's, it's a totally different degree because now we're talking top six winger, but like in a perfect world.

And this is what the conversation needs to be. And I think we're going to have to have it a lot this summer with some of the RFA's two on the market. And it's like front of mind for me with like a Dorofiav because I literally before this was working on the story and tuck in Dorofiev's contracts I was just looking at. is do you want to pay them like a number one winger? Are they number one winger caliber? And I would make the argument, in a perfect world, those are your two and three guys. And it's not a knock on them, right? It's just the reality of it.

If you're looking at the Colorado Avalanche and Alex Tuck joins them tomorrow, he's not the number one guy. He's probably close to the number three. And that's fine. But what's that going to cost this summer when the market is absolutely terrible the free agent market? There is only a handful of players actually available for trade. And who's to say the trades even happen?

And there's only a handful of options to target with offer sheets, which we don't see that often, even though we tease it every single year, it just doesn't happen. So you're going to see teams overpay their own guys. We saw it throughout this year, right? You look at the Kyle Conner deal. And you could say, is he a $12 million guy? You could have that conversation. Maybe he's not if Miko Ranson is and they're a tear apart, you know, in terms of on-ice impact

on both ends of the ice and playoff pedigree and everything and more. But sometimes you do have to overpay your own guys because, you're not going to find that replacement elsewhere, and that's going to work in the player's favor. It's more palatable to do it, though, with the top six guy versus, say, a Parker Kelly, right? If you're going to be paying surplus value on any player, let it be someone with more of a difference-making caliber.

Bouncing one on the NHL here really quickly. One of your thoughts on what you expect out of Vancouver now. So Ryan Johnson gets a general manager chair and the Vancouver Canucks promote Henrik and Daniel Sadeen. I thought one of the funniest moments in the press conference was when someone asked, and I apologize, I can't remember the person's name, you know, what happens when Henrik and Daniel

disagree on something? Who gets the final say, who gets to make the decision? And it seemed to confuse both of them because they're not used to like, one person has a hammer over the other one. Like they will choose conversation over confrontation there all day long and they will arrive at an answer,

which I don't know about you, but I've never seen that at a press conference. It's like the idea of like, what are you talking about? We're grownups. What do you mean like we won't be able to arrive at an answer? I don't know. I found it refreshing the fact that like it seemed like such a foreign concept. Like what do you mean we can't arrive at an answer together?

Anyway, I don't know if you have a thought on any of it or all of it or what you would do if you were in charge of the Vancouver connects here. But the whole Vancouver is the Vancouver right now. Shannon Goldman, the floor is yours. Always fascinating, Vancouver. But with the Siddines too, like I expect them to be in sync. but I do wonder, do those differences ever come up? How do they come to a solution? You're going to have to have some sort of tiebreaker there.

But I think more than that, it kind of stresses the need for having different mindsets in the front office, right? Because I expect the two of them to be mostly in lockstep, right? At this point, it makes a ton of sense. And I think even the general manager pick, they could all be in lockstep together. That's great and wonderful. But you need different viewpoints to widen the conversation.

You can't have it that everyone's just a yes man and everyone likes everyone's ideas because that's never going to happen. It shouldn't be that way. You should want all varying points to say, hold on, even if you're right, let's play devil's advocate. Okay, hang on a second. What about this? Just to widen the conversation, widen the scope of it and try to look at every angle and be more prepared than ever. My biggest question in all of this is obviously the Jim Rutherford of it all.

Like how much is he truly stepping back? How much are his hands going to be off here? Because that might be your differing opinion, if not. But I just see this opening for Vancouver to just widen the lens of different thinkers, right? because you have the former players, you have the players who have chemistry, you have the Siddines of it all. What's going to be different?

And I think that there are some really smart people, and obviously I'm biased. I'm a nerd and I'm gonna own this, right? By saying, why didn't your analytics department? I understand that. I'm going bigger than that. I'm saying bring in someone maybe at the assistant general manager level who has a different viewpoint

to just keep adding different opinions in the mix, even if they never side with them, because that's the whole thing. You can build a department, but it doesn't matter if you don't listen, but just to have a little bit of pushback or just to bring him fresh ideas to be considered. So you have every single option to you possible. And, you know, their names we've seen come up. I saw some discussion about someone like

Cam Lawrence, you know, from Vancouver with that numbers based perspective. You look at the work he did in Florida. And you hear that and you go, yeah, that makes perfect sense. That absolutely makes perfect sense here. You know, not just the city of Vancouver in that connection alone. It's just having someone that can think a little bit differently, whether it's from the draft and development And that's something he's done a lot of work into spotting those hidden gems, the Carter-Hagies of the world, the Jonathan Marches-Oz, you're going to need to have different opinions here. So while I think it's great to have this harmony across the front office and it feels very different and it feels a lot less chaotic and they can settle the waters, which they absolutely need, I'd like to just see them keep building from here and just make that front office a little bit more diverse. Social capital theory is what you think about. It allows different ideas at the table and allows different ideas to travel. further faster is the one thing that I keep coming back to. What do you expect tonight?

You know, let you go on this one. What does this look like to you? What do you watch for early? First shot on Dobish, first of all. Yeah. You know what? I'm going to be curious about how Luken does in a start because he's had some ups and downs.

I think it was on your show in particular. You had Marty Barana talking about why Lucian was a good pick to be the starter because when you're having defensive breakdowns, which we've seen the Sabres have, You need someone who can come up with that big save and Luka'N's that guy. I'm looking for that early. Can he make the early saves to separate himself in this game from what we saw from him earlier this year's and from Lyon last game, obviously?

And I'm looking at the Caulf line to do some damage. I think we saw the Demadoff line absolutely buzzing. He looked great over the last few games. And now we're seeing that Caulfield line get the juice a bit more. And we've seen the bottom six contribute. It's going to be who gets the big guns going, get some early. but I'm hoping it's a great game. You know, I feel like we're starting to get that playoff tension back a little bit.

There's been too many lopsided games this round. Maybe this will be a tight one that it's like to the buzzer that we don't know who's going to win. That's what I'm hoping for. Three real hockey periods. I don't think that's too much to ask in a legit game seven here. Okay. Listen, always did the light. Thanks for the pickle update and all the hockey info and knowledge in that big brain of yours.

We will chat soon. Thanks for having me. Bye you. I don't know.