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Originally Posted by bigrangy
I completely disagree.
He is an elite finisher but when Gaudreau and Ferland aren’t feeding him in the slot, he contributes almost nothing either offensively or defensively
The strange thing is, when Gaudreau went down last year, Monahan really seemed to become more of a driver and less of a passenger. He has the skills to be a 1c but just seems like he’s happy to let Gaudreau do all the work most of the time
Edit: I’ll add that perhaps his defensive shortcomings might be a product of how average to bad Gaudreau is in the defensive zone. Monahan never really seems to make the bad d zone plays but he doesn’t have much success when compared to the other centres imo
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I actually agree with a lot of this. Monahan is as good of a finisher as they come. But his defensive ability is not at the same level as other #1 centers in this league or even on his own team. He doesn’t break up as many plays or out muscle or out position players down low enough and that’s a big reason why the 1st is hemmed in their own zone for entire shifts at times. He needs to work on this to truly elevate this line to the next level.
The other criticism I have is his ability to exit the zone and enter the zone. I actually think that Backlund and to a lesser extent, Jankowski are better than Monahan at this. Now the good thing is he has Gaudreau on his line who is phenomenal at this despite being a winger as he’s limited with the boards being in his way and all. He gets away with not having to do this as much, but he needs to improve on this as well. If he does improve these things even a little, he could become an elite #1 center IMO.