Quote:
Originally Posted by kehatch
What impact would Monahan have had last night VS the oil? We dominated five on five. Top line was buzzing, shut down lines were dominating, fourth line was pounding. Where does Monahan fit in with any of that?
|
I had similar thoughts because I watched Carpenter all night. And what I came away with, not knowing Carpenter's game at all before this, is that he's much faster than Monahan, and much, much better on the boards. Carpenter won a lot of pucks, got a lot of pucks moving in the right direction out of tough physical spots, and Monahan just doesn't do that at this point. So whether Carpenter can ever score a goal, ever, all season... it's actually irrelevant, because he's bringing something that Monahan, who also isn't scoring, cannot bring, and that's physical battle. (Edit: Carpenter's effort on the Draisaitl goal is pretty poor, not sure if he was uncertain about who to pick up or what, but he didn't do ANY work at mid ice on that one).
I think it's very telling that we can take Monahan out of the lineup and not miss him one bit. Not. One. Bit. Not once in any post in any thread did anyone say "Oh man I wish that had been Monahan" last night.
My hope here is that Monahan, Looch, Lewis, Carpenter, etc can all rotate and get the rest they need, or healing. If Monahan isn't physically right, put him on LTIR.
But at this point the center depth on this team looks to me like Lindholm, Backlund, Jarnkrok (who plays a Backlundish game, only I think he's faster), Carpenter, Monahan.
I'm not interested in seeing Monahan on a wing, he's too slow, he doesn't have attacking speed, but more importantly, he can't get back into his own zone fast enough to make a difference on transitional attacking plays. It's 5 on 4 for 3 seconds.