[dino7c]

Originally Posted by littlereddevil

Exactly. Let's look at recent SC winners and who their #1Cs were.

Colorado - MacKinnon (elite)
Tampa - Stamkos (elite)
St. Louis - O'Reilly (solid #1, but not elite)
Washington - Kuznetsov (solid #1, but not elite)
Pittsburgh - Crosby (elite)
Chicago - Toews (solid #1, but not elite)
Los Angeles - Kopitar (solid #1, but not elite)

But if you look further at these rosters, you'll see that almost all of these teams have a solid 1-2 punch of good centres on their top two lines. So I wouldn't necessarily say that an elite #1C is completely necessary to be a Stanley Cup winner (but it can certainly help and improve your chances!), but more so that you need a deep lineup with lots of secondary scoring.

Do the Flames have that right now? Arguably no, as much as we like Backlund he's more a solid 3rd line centre on a deep team.

If Monahan returns to his old form and Lindholm doesn't regress without Gaudreau on his wing, maybe the Flames will get that 1-2 punch.

Otherwise if I were Treliving and looking to take the team to the next level, I'd be looking at trading/signing through free agency a 2C to complement Lindholm. I doubt the Flames will end up signing Kadri (I think he's out of their price range and wants to return to Colorado), but maybe the Flames could look at a trade this off-season, or before the trade deadline (once we know which form of Monahan we'll be getting) to acquire that 2C they really need.

Stamkos played like 1 period in their 2020 cup run to be fair