Quote:
Originally Posted by GranteedEV
You're not wrong but being a centre and excelling as a centre are different things. I'm not convinced Monahan as of now excels as a centre. Obviously everyone here has hope that he'll excel at the position in the future, but Gaudreau excels at his position at present.
Likewise I am not convinced Tyler Seguin is more valuable than Jamie Benn - sure he puts up numbers but he does not excel at his centre responsibilities. I even think Spezza handles those better than Seguin does. Or for that matter, age aside, I never thought Steven Stamkos was more valuable than Martin St. Louis.
You don't want to build around wingers but if your best winger is better at being a winger than your best centre is at being a centre then it is what it is. You can't just inflate the centre's value for the sole reason of being a centre.
|
Agreed. And I also think Benn may be the more valuable player than Seguin. But Benn as the premiere power-forward in the NHL brings a lot of things to the table that Gaudreau does not.
IMO Gaudreau is currently more valuable to the team than Monahan but I think Monahan still has room to grow, I'm not convinced Gaudreau will get significantly better, and Monahan plays the more important position. So Monahan may edge Gaudreau out in how valuable he is to team success within a year or two.
In the end he'll get signed, hopefully to an amount that lets Treliving build the team properly. But I think long term we've got a great set up with a young core. We're deep at centre with Monahan, Bennett, Backlund and Jankowski. We have two extremely skilled wingers in Gaudreau and Tkachuk. And we have a very good defense with Gio, Brodie, Hamilton and whoever of Jokipakka, Wotherspoon, Kulak, Andersson, Kylington, Hickey end up joining them long term.
The future is bright. But I think Gaudreau needs to be signed for 7.5 million or less in order to keep everyone.