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Originally Posted by GioforPM
But don't you want complementary and not identical players? And isn't someone like Lindholm the medium between those two?
BTW what happened to Johnny's intensity? He used to have it.
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I feel like Johnny's intensity has slowly waned due to his centre being MIA for the last month and a half. Things aren't clicking in the offensive zone in large part because Monahan has been invisible. Johnny seems frustrated and is just channeling that in non-productive ways.
Gaudreau has actually been more physical this playoff series than I've seen him in a long time - throwing hits and attempting to fight battles in the corners. The problem is that he's just not physically equipped to be effective doing that. I'd much rather see him spend his energy on being more engaged on the backcheck, trying to intercept passes or strip pucks from people as he's shown himself of being capable of doing in the past. They haven't been generating much offense off the transition because they haven't been generating any disruption in their defensive zone to transition out of.
I just don't get what's happened to Monahan in the last little while - he's said it isn't an injury, but if so then there's gotta be something off with his headspace. He's had bags under his eyes in a lot of games through March and into at least the beginning of playoffs - maybe it's off-ice issues, but he just hasn't looked like himself. Outside of faceoffs he's contributed very little the whole series.