You're missing the point. We don't have the luxury of making our team worse. We can't bench the "star" players because we have no one to replace them with.
That may be true. Whats also true is that we lost to the worst team in the league quite handily and that our "star center" didn't look like he gave two flying ****s about it.
He's not a part of our victories. He's not huge on the face off circle, he's not making great plays and passes, he's not scoring goals... So, I don't see what we're risking by benching him a few games.
Boyle was benched for similar reasons. He was skating uninspired, he wasn't strong along the boards, he wasn't physical. That's his role on the team and he wasn't fulfilling it. Richards is in the same boat.
No one to replace him with? We can still shift Miller to 2nd line center. We did when Richards was injured and we still had similar results in the standings. Only difference is this is Brads wake up call, that was Brad trying to recoup.
1 period benching? That's not enough. This guy hasn't been performing for his entire tenure here. The fact of the manner is this guy is being paid the most out of any of our players and he's not reflecting that contract. He's not performing to standards, he's not leading, he's not doing much of anything. Benching him shouldn't even be a topic of discussion, ever. Yet it is and he should be. He's not performing. He's been benched a period, had players placed on his line for the purpose of waking him up EVEN when those players were thriving on a different line, continuously been put in situations of high importance, what else is there to try with this guy man?
What you're proposing is to continue sending him out there and hoping that at one point he'll finally "get it". They've been doing that... no results yet. I'm tired of waiting, as are many other fans, justifiably. No other job medium allows underperformance for such a duration of time without some sort of repercussion. The mentality of "we have no one else to put out there in his place" is ridiculous. Let me put it this way. We're not taking anything off of the table if we bench him because he's not bringing anything to the table to begin with. That's the purpose of this wake up call. We'll continue to float around the 8 seed with or without him. The point is getting out of the 8 seed and finally starting to perform up to expectations, and that starts when our "star players" start earning their salaries.