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Originally Posted by Lanny_McDonald
Do we dump every player that get's hurt? I guess we should be dumping Tyler Parsons too? Martin Pospisil as well?
I love that people complain that a guy gets hurt but still plays, trying to help the team, but what happens if he takes your advice and sits? When does the complaining begin that he isn't playing through some of these "minor" injuries and isn't a team guy? I like heart and soul players, and Monahan is one of those.
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I don’t think anyone is criticizing Monahan’s heart. He has been doing everything asked of him. That said, he should’ve sat instead of being ineffective on the ice. His ice time could’ve been used to give a younger player the opportunity. Perhaps Bennett, or Dube. It could’ve been a good development opportunity.
For the longest time we wanted to know how would splitting Gaudreau and Monahan work out. Based on last season it seems that Monahan is the bigger beneficiary from that combination. Consider the ineffectiveness of the Gaudreau-Monahan line 5 on 5 starting from the bubble, and throughout this season. That line was constantly hemmed in their own zone, and was too gased to do anything but dump the puck in at the end of a long shift.
I don’t think there’s one poster that wouldn’t love Monahan getting back to form. His passing is underrated, and his physical and defensive play was slowly improving. His shot(in particular the speed of release) is his biggest weapon and a huge reason for concern based on last season. His bigger attention to defence, or lack of speed made him seem rather ineffective in transition this last season. He had plenty of points off the rush in 2018-19, but for one reason or another he was ineffective last season.
The reason fans are frustrated is because we don’t know the extent of Monahan’s injuries, and we don’t know the degree to which he would recover. We know that at the interviews to start the season he’s always 100% and feeling better than ever. At the end of the season we find out he was playing through something. Rinse and repeat. Last season his line generated on average as much offence 5 on 5 as Nordstrom(per 60). He is a much better player than Nordstrom, particularly offensively, but that is a huge red flag.
I think that the lack of information about the injuries leads fans to guess about his effectiveness going forward. People don’t want to trade Monahan because they think he’s a bad person. The math is simple Gaudreau-Lindholm-Tkachuk looked like a top line. The team’s core needs an overhaul, and trading Monahan seems like the least risky way to achieve it.