Quote:
Originally Posted by TheScorpion
Because the Flames only had one Huberdeau-calibre player instead of two, and the connections between Gaudreau and Monahan/Lindholm were too good to break up in favour of propping up a complementary player.
|
...Monahan and Lindholm were/are... complementary players being propped up themselves.
Lindholm was also exclusively playing RW when on a line with Gaudreau during Bennett's tenure as a Flame. There was nothing stopping the team from even forming a Gaudreau - Bennett - Lindholm line. The only centre Lindholm played while Bennett was here was when he had Tkachuk and Mangiapane on his flanks.. which was still an option. The 3M line was also highly potent at the time, so not having a Barkov type is a complete revision of history.
Gaudreau - Bennett - Tkachuk
Mangiapane - Backlund - Lindholm
Lucic - Dube - Monahan
4LW - Ryan - 4RW
There is no reason some variation of this was impractical - other than the fact that Bennett was typecast as... 4LW.
Even omitting how poorly Monahan played as Gaudreau's centre in 2020-22, the pairing had five years together to do... something together But they proved easy to shut down in tight checking games because the centre simply did not carry the puck... EVER.
One of the reasons Bennett is so successful as Huberdeau's centre is because he actually does do a lot of work with respect to breakouts and zone entries.