Matt Benning to Eat Nachos vs Ottawa

Matt Benning will not be in the lineup for the Edmonton Oilers when they face the Ottawa Senators on Saturday.

It comes as no surprise as he has struggled mightily the past few games. He was supposed to make the jump to the top 4 this year while Andrej Sekera is getting healed but so far it just hasn’t happened.

He and Kris Russell together have directly caused a goal against in consecutive games and have created countless scoring chances for the opposing teams since the season began.

The sad part is, the bottom four looks even worse now than when Benning was playing too many minutes. Kris Russell was really bad the last game, and as we’ve seen before, he’s even worse when playing the right side. Yohann Auvito slots in as the 6th defender and I’m not sure what to think of that. During the preseason he was ok between being not ok. Darnell Nurse slides into the top-4 despite doing nothing to have earned that. It’s kind of like the two hunters trying to outrun a bear on this one.

So what do you think? Is this worse? Should Oscar Klefbom and Adam Larsson just play 60 minutes on Saturday? Personally I’m not impressed but also have a hard time criticizing the move.