"What happened to the top line after the All Star Break?"
Heard this a hundred times, and I think the answer is.... "Nothing."
Nothing "happened" to them. What happens is that the game gets faster and more intense, and checking gets tighter, and they didn't respond to that.
Playoffs even more so.
So these guys look okay when other teams aren't ramped right up, when the game is a little slower. But when things get faster and the checking is tighter and there's not so much room out there.... you need some other gear, some other dynamic - I think we got a glimpse of Lindholm's, for example, where he started to be a more physical player and threw some pretty good hits. But Johnny and Monny did not find some other dimension, and got shut down, utterly, in the playoffs.
Not sure what Monahan is. Not a dominant driving 1c, but doesn't have the tenacity I'd like to see in a 2c either. He's like, a soft 1c who has a nice touch at the net, but doesn't have the full-package game at that same level - his defending was inadequate and at some times in the playoffs laughable, wrong place, wrong time, wrong direction, and all of it with seemingly no real intensity.
Tough to question his heart after he played out the season last year on a broken everything.... and yet I just don't see that fire in his game, the will to win (or refusal to lose). Same with Neal this year.... go smash someone, do something useful if all you do on the ice is float around the perimeter of the play hoping for a puck to squirt loose in your direction.
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