Quote:
Originally Posted by GranteedEV
That's a myopic analysis though. No one will go through the annals of history and talks about how many goals Peter Forsberg or Henrik Sedin or Joe Thornton or Pavel Datsyuk or Sergei Fedorov or Brian Trottier or Nik Backstrom scored.
While goalscoring is important, it is not really a framework around which to evaluate players with other responsibilities. We saw this last year too with the insufferable "Dougie Hamilton has the most goals of any defenseman!!!".
Can you honestly say that you would reject "#1" center swap offers by the Flyers, Panthers, Avs because of the information you posted?
Monahan's goal scoring is an important part of this team and we certainly need it back. But defaulting to it as if that outweighs the many other aspects of the position - the aspects even a bottom six guy like Derek Ryan has excelled at in that top line role - comes across as cherrypicking. Especially when using career totals as if a team like Florida cares that Barkov had a slow start to his career with heavy responsibilities thrust upon him from the start.
I think we're very fortunate that Mikael Backlund is as good as he is at many of the duties expected of a #1 center, and together with Monahan's offense we have the equivalent of one, but center is still by far the weakest area on the team. There's no shame in admitting that.
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I am not saying he's the best centre drafted since 2013, nor even the 7th best, but I am saying that based upon his goal scoring prowess, to say "he sucks" or "he is mediocre" is completely wrong.