Quote:
Originally Posted by CliffFletcher
An NHL centre is expected to do have 6 or 7 elements to his game: score goals, take face-offs, distribute the puck, forecheck, backcheck, quickly assess dangers without the puck, track back deep to give the defence an outlet pass, gain the zone with possession.
Monahan does one of those very well, a couple decently, and the rest poorly.
Since it's mostly the things that don't show up on the stat sheet that Monahan does poorly, it's difficult for fans to talk about the big deficiencies in his play. But I'm confident that the Flames braintrust are aware of them. They know how severe of a handicap it is when opposing coaches lick their chops at line-matching against the Flames, knowing what a matchup advantage they have whenever the Flames top line is on the ice.
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This is very accurate. And when he’s not doing the first very well, as in this past year with 22 goals, it’s a big problem.