He's playing third line ES minutes with Gallagher and Pearson, 1st PP unit with Caulfield and Suzuki, and second PK unit with Pinard. It's a similar deployment to how he likely would have been used by Calgary if he wasn't traded.
This is healthy Monahan doing health Monahan things...win draws and find open spots in the offensive zone. The negatives are still there, like his inability to carry the puck, mediocre skating, and risk of injury.
However, Montreal's success early success isn't sustainable. They are 28th in xGF, they have a negative goal differential, and they're 2nd in the league for limiting high danger chances despite a really shaky defensive crew (i.e. Matheson, Savard, Kovacevic, and Harris are leading in TOI).
It's nice to see Monahan doing well, but both Montreal and Monahan also started hot last year before reverting back to expectations.
Even if he reverts to expectations I would gladly take that and our 1st over Kadri for 7m.
To be fair to the Flames, Monahan completely looked like damaged goods at the end of his Flames tenure, his injuries really impacted his game. He was a really good player early in his career. Would be amazing to see him recover and be a productive player again. Hope he stays healthy and does well.
And it ended up being the same thing last year too: great start, then tailed off and eventually shut down. Super happy for him, I'll always love that dude, but we're not even 10 games into the season yet. That would be awesome if he can play the whole year, but history is against him. We'll see, I'm pulling for him
Fantastic, great to see. If he could go back to being a consistent 60-70 point guy it would be a great trade for Montreal (along with the 1st round pick they will get).
The patience and wherewithal to not just blindly swat at it. Even cranked his stick up to get Hill to dive out of position.
He's always had natural scoring instincts. It's a shame we have to watch Montreal benefit from them when we're struggling to put goals in the net. I'll always cheer for Monahan though, so I'm glad to see he's doing well.
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He played at a 56 point clip last season before he got hurt. While that's not his 70-80 point pace he played at here, it's still pretty solid.
I blame the Flames for allowing him to play when he was clearly injured. Every season he'd fall off a cliff and then need multiple surgeries at the end of the season. They should have shut him down and let him heal instead of pushing it. It caught up to him and he had that down year but I don't think that was all on Monahan. The Flames handled him terribly.
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I'm happy that he's in a new environment and having a great time. I have a feeling if he was still with the Flames that the current cloud over the team would have made it pretty miserable for him to be here, especially with Johnny and all the other players gone.
This is a team that had Tkachuk, Gaudreau, Monohan, and Bennett overlapping and we couldn't deploy these assets properly for years. Its all on us.
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