Hot takes left right and centre here.
Monahan floats outside the tough areas? Nah. His highlight reel may be high slot shots but he still hands out in the middle and he still has defenders on his constantly. And he goes behind the net and to the corners a fair bit too.
Monahan doesn’t fight when Gaudreau gets slashed? As opposed to all the fights Lindholm gets into when Chuckie is in a scrum, or now with Gaudreau on his line? Or all Backlund’s fights? Or Ryan’s? Here’s what would happen. Gaudreau gets slashed, Monahan fights, loses badly because he’s not a fighter, other team gets a boost.
And no, he’s not terrible defensively, in fact, IMO he’s been pretty good this year. And IMO while the first the line change with Dube and Mangiapane had promise, the reversion to Ritchie on that line put him in exactly the same position as when he was with Gaudreau and Ritchie, except Mangiapane isn’t quite as creative (though better at some other things) and he had no history to rely on with him. In other words, Gaudreau got a better centre and a much much better RW, Monahan got at best an equivalent LW and the same crappy RW.
I’m a little surprised it’s a hip, but it maybe makes some sense. If it was wrists, why was he still good at FOs? His main issue was he wasn’t getting his shot off quickly and it was being deflected a lot. So maybe he wasn’t able to twist into shooting position as fast.
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