2023 first-round pick Zach Benson is changing the discussion with his play in preseason. Now he’s making things very interesting about where he should start the season.

To get ready for the upcoming Buffalo Sabres season, I’ll be previewing most of those involved in the eventual successes and failures by going through the alphabet using a different word each time – a revolutionary theme if there ever was one.

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Decisions

The NHL Draft has facets that make up what a good draft looks like. Scouting and how good it is (or isn’t) goes the furthest, but there’s also preparation and how much so the scouts and executives are for it. Then there’s luck. Like the number 13 can be immensely lucky in drafting when it means landing a potential star player at that position when there was minimal expectation they’d be there.

That’s where the Buffalo Sabres selected Zach Benson at the 2023 draft in Nashville and now nearly a week into training camp, plus another week-plus thanks to rookie camp, Benson is making his presence felt with his performance on the ice to the point where you have to ask if he’ll make the Sabres roster out of camp.

He’s 18 years old but he’s played with the calmness and savvy of a guy 10 years his senior whether he’s played with his peers during the Prospects Challenge or with the top line stars of the NHL so far in preseason.

He can’t really jump the line and go straight to the NHL…can he? After scoring in his NHL preseason debut on Sunday in Washington and assisting on Jeff Skinner’s power play goal Tuesday night, you have to wonder if he can.

“Just about everything (Benson) did leaves a good impression,” Sabres coach Don Granato said following the Sabres 4-1 win against Boston Tuesday night. “Much like I’ve been saying for the past four or five days, you put him with top players, and he can process the game as well as anybody and he showed that again tonight. He has a knack and a sense to read plays, make plays, steal and strip pucks from players that you shouldn’t in this league and in two games he’s been impressive equally both nights.”

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It’s an uphill battle for any player at the age of 18 or 19 to make it to the NHL right away. Players with elite skill and talent make it look easy, but even some of the best will still struggle at times throughout the season because that’s only natural. Not everyone is going to have it easy right off the jump like Sidney Crosby, Alex Ovechkin, or Connor McDavid. Freaks of nature have it that easy.

For Zach Benson, the perception of what this season would be for him seemed simple. Coming off a season which he was the WHL’s third leading scorer behind Connor Bedard (one of those freaks of nature) and 20-year-old at the time Chase Wheatcroft, he was destined to head back to the WHL and light up the scoreboard once again.

Yeah…about that.

But getting and staying in the NHL isn’t just about making the little plays and scoring a lot of points, although that will certainly earn a player a much longer look. There’s much more to it, particularly for players as young as Benson.

“You look at young players in size and strength as an automatic,” Granato said. “You can’t put a guy in the NHL, no matter how talented he is, if he can’t keep up with the size and the strength of players in the NHL and (Benson) stripped and stole some pucks and forced some plays against guys (Sunday in Washington) who were 30 or 40 pounds heavier than him which is really, really impressive.

“That was extremely impressive, not only from his age but his hockey knowledge and feel for the game. Certainly, impressive with the size discrepancy in many of those situations, so that was something I never would’ve guessed a player could do that quick, but he did that the other night.”

While most attention about who will take Jack Quinn’s spot in the Sabres lineup while he rehabs from a ruptured Achilles’ tendon has focused on the likes of Savoie (now injured), Jiri Kulich, Isak Rosén, and Lukas Rousek, it’s Benson whose play has forced him to the forefront of the discussion and it’s gotten him into an audition line of sorts playing with Jeff Skinner and Tage Thompson.

“To me it’s obvious he didn’t get to this point in his career being a slow learner,” Granato said. “You look at the peer group that he’s had, he probably is one of the faster learners in that peer group for different reasons. That’s why his skill is so advanced, and his knowledge is so advanced is he basically taught himself how to learn, how to make himself better. I haven’t seen a lot of that yet, but you definitely feel that with how accomplished he is and how easily he’s slid into what is pressure spots. There’s 11 other guys in the lineup that would feel more pressure than he’s felt and present more pressure than he has if you’re put on that line, and he’s been real good.”

The lack of stress that’s present in Benson’s performances fits the picture perfect. He’s a hopeful, easy-going teenager with the world in front of him. He’s proven to be an elite junior hockey player and, truth be told, he’s playing with house money in Sabres camp. Just being himself and leaning into his abilities lets him play naturally which, for a guy with his skill and talent, works out really well when teamed up with other supremely talented players. Weird concept, right?

“It’s pretty awesome, you dream of this to play with guys like Skinner and Thompson,” Benson said following Tuesday’s game. “It’s surreal.”

Benson’s shown a consistent knack to not only make the right plays and the right passes to create opportunities, but also to make the kinds of passes that make it that much easier for those on the receiving end to create the best chances. More than a few times he’s floated a pass, forehand or backhand, that flies like a chip shot and lands softly right on the tape. Maybe that’s something that’s easier to do against lesser competition, but he’s doing it against players more on his level as well and that’s just one small part of what he does to make life easier for his teammates.

“It’s something that I work on,” Benson said. “My goal is to put it on their tape as flat as possible and that’s what I try to do. Sometimes you have to make quicker decisions than other times and those passes might not be the greatest, but playing with Skinner and Thompson they can pick up some pretty bad passes.”

As strong as Benson’s offensive game has been, he’s shown he’s not a liability defensively thanks to his tenacious forechecking and ability to create turnovers up the ice. Whether he’s stripping pucks away from opposing carriers or making them pass the puck the wrong way, he’s a one-man swarm of gnats on a hot day and his stick skill allows him to either just take the puck away or lift their stick and disrupt the entire process. Combine that with how he’s able to fit in at his size (5’10” 170 pounds) and make that almost an irrelevant argument against him and it makes his case even more compelling.

The fun thing about players as young as Benson is their carefree spirit. Benson has that in spades, and it makes him that much more enjoyable to watch. Seeing a guy that age having the time of his life after a whirlwind of a summer is genuinely heartening. Mix in that he’s rocking a mullet and it’s like he came right out of a casting call for a young star player.

This isn’t to say other young players in camp aren’t having a great time, they are. How could they not? But Benson has been so smooth and confident, it makes it so much easier to buy in that, yes, he can stick around for a while and allow everyone to see if he can be an NHL player right now. After all, things with his junior team are a little bit messy right now and everything in Buffalo is in a good place. But whether he’s here for a long time or a good time in training camp will be exciting to watch.

“I’m having so much fun out there,” Benson said with a wide smile. “It’s a blast.”