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With absolutely nothing happening in the hockey world right now, and for the foreseeable future, I’ve decided to take the plunge and write player profiles for each member of the Calgary Flames.
As was the case when I did them last summer, we’ll be looking at the season they just put together and expectations moving forward.
I’ve written up 14 players thus far, with Johnny Gaudreau being the most recent.
Today we’re going with Sean Monahan.
Counting stats: 70 games, 48 points (22 goals, 26 assists), 18:06 average time on ice
5v5 underlyings: 1.53 points/60, -1.02 CF% Rel, -5.18 GF% Rel, -3.29 xGF% Rel, 98.6 PDO
2019-20 review: Sean Monahan has always been a flawed player. He doesn’t bring much – anything? – to the table if he’s not filling the net. Generally he goes 1-2 months per season where he turns into a ghost and doesn’t produce. The Flames have lived with it because, in aggregate, his outputs have been strong. They’re often looking at ~30 goals and 60+ points, with potential for even more. That masks a lot of problems.
They didn’t get close to that kind of production this season and I think it’s one of the reasons the Flames were a bubble team prior to the pause. A good chunk of his offense evaporated and he continued to be an anchor in terms of play driving. That bled into the results as not only did he negatively impact the team’s shot and chance share, but the Flames were actually out-scored by 10 goals(!) with Monahan on the ice at 5v5. That’s not acceptable from your No. 1 center if you have any expectations at all.
What sucks about Monahan’s season is his play also submarined Johnny Gaudreau and, to a lesser extent, Elias Lindholm. Mikael Backlund is not a 1C, and is at his best on the shutdown line, so there were no real alternatives with Monahan running in place. They (mostly) had to keep trotting him out as the 1C and just hoped for a turnaround, which didn’t really come.
Given expectations, and the supporting cast Monahan gets to work with on a nightly basis, I think this season was definitely a failure.
Fun fact(s): Monahan scored on just 13.3% of his shots. While that’s still a strong number, it was the lowest percentage of his career.
2020-21 outlook: I think there is a very real possibility Monahan is traded this off-season. At the very least, I expect to see his name pop up in rumors. GM Brad Treliving would be doing a disservice not to see what’s out there at this point.
I know everyone loves using the ‘you can’t win with X’ narrative – it’s an easy leg to stand on until it actually happens – but I just don’t see Monahan serving as the 1C on a Cup team. He’s an offense-only center, and that offense comes with extreme peaks and valleys.
The Flames could use center help as is but, if the right return is tabled, they could take it and move Lindholm to the middle. He’s shown enough that I think they’d be comfortable having him center Johnny Gaudreau on the top line.
If Monahan does return, there needs to be changes. They can’t keep going with the same plan and expecting different results.
Should Treliving be able to land another scoring winger – ideally one with real defensive prowess (Kyle Palmieri, for example) – the Flames could try something like this:
Johnny Gaudreau - Elias Lindholm - X
X - Sean Monahan - Kyle Palmieri (it’s just an example!)
Matthew Tkachuk - Mikael Backlund - Andrew Mangiapane
This would give the Flames three quality scoring lines and help insulate Monahan’s play driving/defensive issues.
numbers via naturalstattrick.com and hockey-reference.com
Recent posts:
2020-21 player profile: Johnny Gaudreau
2020-21 player profile: Travis Hamonic
2020-21 player profile: David Rittich
2020-21 player profile: Cam Talbot
2020-21 player profile: Milan Lucic
2020-21 player profile: Mark Giordano
2020-21 player profile: Dillon Dube
2020-21 player profile: Andrew Mangiapane
2020-21 player profile: Derek Ryan
2020-21 player profile: Sam Bennett
2020-21 player profile: T.J. Brodie
2020-21 player profile: Mikael Backlund
2020-21 player profile: Noah Hanifin
2020-21 player profile: Elias Lindholm
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