Speculation: Armchair GM Thread - 2019/20 Season Part 2

[Sparky93]

There's no shortage of skill on this team. What we are short of is players that are winners. While it's tough to argue that Barkov isn't more skilled than Monahan, I'm not sure if he's more of a winner.

 

[DFF]

There's no shortage of skill on this team. What we are short of is players that are winners. While it's tough to argue that Barkov isn't more skilled than Monahan, I'm not sure if he's more of a winner.

I would violently argue that there is a lack of skills center at the top.... obviously barkov has some issues otherwise he is not available... but standing pat is not an option

 

[viper0220]

There's no shortage of skill on this team. What we are short of is players that are winners. While it's tough to argue that Barkov isn't more skilled than Monahan, I'm not sure if he's more of a winner.

I think if we have Barkov instead of Monahan, we would have success in the playoffs.

The thing that most people forget is that Monahan came from a losing organization in his draft year.

 

[Calculon]

Peewee level coaching is making things look worse than they really are but at the same time, this roster is clearly flawed and poorly handled. Starts at the top with Monahan; elite shot from the slot but average to below average at just about everything else. Upgrading him with a real franchise centre like Barkov/Barzal/Eichel would be a dream come true. But that's more fantasy than real life. But they're deeper problems as well. Giordano's starting to look his age and that's a big step backwards for the organization. Monahan and Lindholm fading down the stretch yet again. Ruining assets like Bennett and Kylington to chase a first round playoff exit. Bleak.

But again, it really can't be stressed enough how poor of a job the coaching staff is doing right now. Awful system that doesn't match the roster whatsoever. Dismal showings from the first and fourth lines (minus Gaudreau) while the third line is hit or miss. Coaching response? Keep rolling the same lines, change nothing. Needlessly creating a so called goalie controversy when the common sense thing is just to ride the hot hand while letting Rittich reset mentally. It's all so infuriatingly pathetic.

And regarding Barkov, pinning Florida's woes on him is folly. This is a franchise whose ownership insists on cutting payroll the moment things go sideways. It's hard to build momentum with that kind of mentality. In a competently run organization (so not the Flames), there wouldn't be any questions about his ability to win.

 

[SKRusty]

I think the elite defensive play, superior playmaking ability and being able to make his line mates better are upgrades for sure. Point totals across, I can see how it appears lateral, but Barkov would give us something we haven’t had since the 80’s.

Barkov is not yet that guy that carries a team. He is not a Bergeron level player at this time. Barkov has been surrounded by more talent than Johnny and Mony from the beginning and despite being fed his choice of forwards he has only once been able to get into the playoffs once. (He and Huberdeau have almost had a third scorer since Barkov came in the league. Jonny and Mony have not)

Barkov has played with Huberdeau(20-30 goals) , Hoffman (perennial 30 Goal scorer), Jagr (66 point Jagr got them into the playoffs 46 did not), Trocheck, Dadonov, and Yandle, & Ekblad on D. At least Mony has made it to the second round.

Barkov shows moments of absolute brilliance but unfortunately his Give a Sh*t Meter is not always cranked up. Look, Florida has had a forward group as deep as the Flames, 2 elite goalies in Luongo and now Bobrovsky and the Calder winning Ekblad and all-star Keith Yandle.

Barkov is nothing more than a lateral move. I stand by my words.

 

[Flames Fanatic]

Barkov is not yet that guy that carries a team. He is not a Bergeron level player at this time. Barkov has been surrounded by more talent than Johnny and Mony from the beginning and despite being fed his choice of forwards he has only once been able to get into the playoffs once. (He and Huberdeau have almost had a third scorer since Barkov came in the league. Jonny and Mony have not)

Barkov has played with Huberdeau(20-30 goals) , Hoffman (perennial 30 Goal scorer), Jagr (66 point Jagr got them into the playoffs 46 did not), Trocheck, Dadonov, and Yandle, & Ekblad on D. At least Mony has made it to the second round.

Barkov shows moments of absolute brilliance but unfortunately his Give a Sh*t Meter is not always cranked up. Look, Florida has had a forward group as deep as the Flames, 2 elite goalies in Luongo and now Bobrovsky and the Calder winning Ekblad and all-star Keith Yandle.

Barkov is nothing more than a lateral move. I stand by my words.

I'm not sure I 100% agree, but a big part of Florida's failure to gain ground in the standings lately is Barkov and Huberdeau falling quiet. There is some legitimacy to your argument to an extent.

 

[Kranix]

is it too late to trade for more good players?
Send Bennett and Jankowski to the AHL

 

[Dack]

Barkov may be quiet right now but Monahan hasn't done jack shit in 20 games and he's a defensive liability. Trading him and Hanifin for Barkov would be a massive W for us.

 

[Kahvi]

Barkov is great, but he also seems to be a bit injury prone.

 

[FlamerForLife]

Barkov may be quiet right now but Monahan hasn't done jack shit in 20 games and he's a defensive liability. Trading him and Hanifin for Barkov would be a massive W for us.

Let's be real, there's no way Florida would accept that deal but if they did it would be great for us.

 

[Volica]

I don't think there's a package we could offer outside of the name of Tkachuk that would even get Florida remotely thinking of trading Barkov away.
If the asking price was Monahan + Hanifin + 1st, that trade would have been done ages ago.

 

[DFF]

I don't think there's a package we could offer outside of the name of Tkachuk that would even get Florida remotely thinking of trading Barkov away.
If the asking price was Monahan + Hanifin + 1st, that trade would have been done ages ago.

Their situation has changed. Rumor is they want to break up the core now...but I agree that package may not be enough. I don't want to do it but tkachuk for barkov is still a win for the flames.

 

[Flames Fanatic]

He's not exactly been super impressive for his reputation on a team that is desperately fighting for playoffs even more than we are.

 

[Calculon]

Barkov's been dealing with a lower body injury since early February. Was over a point per game prior to that. Still, 13 points (6 goals, 7 assists) in 19 games. Haven't watched him so can't say how he's played.

In the same time frame, Monahan has 12 points, (8 goals, 4 assists) in 22 games. But having watched him, he's been mostly invisible, if not an outright liability.

 

[Volica]

Let's put it this way, if Barkov, Eichel, any of the elite 1C's become available; Calgary's all in. I don't care about the price.
Make it Monahan and three first rounders. Make it whatever. What always ends up happening in these situations, where stars get traded... is the return always look staggering at the start, and 5 years later we joke around about how LOL the return was for the elite player.

When Seguin became available, I thought Calgary should have backed up the brinks truck. These are the types of players you never regret spending huge assets for.

A:
Gaudreau - Barkov - Lindholm
Tkachuk - Backlund - Mangiapane

Top 6 would be ABSOLUTELY ridiculous. Barkov and Backlund both control the ice so well. Teams would just never have the puck.

 

[Dack]

Barkov's been dealing with a lower body injury since early February. Was over a point per game prior to that. Still, 13 points (6 goals, 7 assists) in 19 games. Haven't watched him so can't say how he's played.

In the same time frame, Monahan has 12 points, (8 goals, 4 assists) in 22 games. But having watched him, he's been mostly invisible, if not an outright liability.

And on top of that Barkov's star linemate (Huberdeau) has somewhat mirrored his slump, the whole line is struggling.

Gaudreau has been a point per game player since the all star break and Monahan is still playing at a ~50 point pace.

 

[Volica]

Barkov's been dealing with a lower body injury since early February. Was over a point per game prior to that. Still, 13 points (6 goals, 7 assists) in 19 games. Haven't watched him so can't say how he's played.

In the same time frame, Monahan has 12 points, (8 goals, 4 assists) in 22 games. But having watched him, he's been mostly invisible, if not an outright liability.

It's a shame, because I thought Monahan really turned a corner early in the season; but just dropped off the face of the planet it seemed in terms of overall play.

Hell, he'd still be a rich-man's 1B centre on almost every team in the league; but he just doesn't work as an elite 1C. Throwback, remember the bitch fest some folks had on this board when I said Monahan was top line centre, but not an elite one? Turns out, he's a low end top line centre.

 

[Mobiandi]

With the exception of last season, I think Backlund has been the superior center throughout Monahan's career here

 

[Mazatt]

A couple lineup thoughts, somewhat inspired by @ScrewNHLOfficiating and some of his recent comments. This is gonna mostly be about forward lines, so a couple notes to start. Monahan has been nowhere as good as Gaudreau and that line is producing on his back, not due to Lindholm or Monahan. Ryan has also been weaker recently so playing down in the lineup could do some good. So maybe something based around. The 4th line just is kinda doo doo in general.

Mangiapane - Backlund - Tkachuk

This line works, no need to change it. Now things get a bit messy.

Gaudreau - Bennett - x (Lindholm, Dube?)

As people might've guessed, the big idea here is moving Bennett up with Gaudreau and seeing what we have there. A part of this is now questioning if we keep Lindholm there or do we want to move Dube up and keep Lindholm with Monahan instead of sticking him with Lucic or someone else on his own.

x (Rieder, Jankowski?) - Monahan - x (Lindholm, Dube)

This is where this idea starts to fall apart a bit because our options on the wing are severely lacking and I'm not sure if this leads to a better bottom 6 since we have to worry about about the left wing position a lot more than we once had to.

Lucic - Ryan - x (Rieder, Jankowski)

Lucic and Ryan work together. I thought maybe Lucic could play on this potential 3rd but I feel like Monahan and Lucic being together would be frowned upon. Maybe Rinaldo can come into the lineup without Jankowski playing to fix the wings? Who knows. Something should change though.

 

[wasunder]

Let's put it this way, if Barkov, Eichel, any of the elite 1C's become available; Calgary's all in. I don't care about the price.
Make it Monahan and three first rounders. Make it whatever. What always ends up happening in these situations, where stars get traded... is the return always look staggering at the start, and 5 years later we joke around about how LOL the return was for the elite player.

When Seguin became available, I thought Calgary should have backed up the brinks truck. These are the types of players you never regret spending huge assets for.

A:
Gaudreau - Barkov - Lindholm
Tkachuk - Backlund - Mangiapane

Top 6 would be ABSOLUTELY ridiculous. Barkov and Backlund both control the ice so well. Teams would just never have the puck.

Absolutely agree, if there was a package we could put together that doesn't include Tkachuk, and we got Barkov, that would be an absolute win, if we could keep Monahan that would be great too as he wouldn't have to be the #1, and would slide to a much more suitable #2 role. However, I don't think there is a package we could put together to get Florida to pull the trigger.

 

[OvermanKingGainer]

Do people actually think Monahan is a better #2 than Backlund?

Because he's not. Without Gaudreau he's not even a better #3 than Ryan.

 

[BobColesNasalCavity]

I'd be real interested to see what type of numbers Monahan would put up over the course of a season without playing with Gaudreau.

Also, this is like the 3rd straight year where he was completely disappeared after the all star break. The one year we gave him because he was playing injured.

 

[InfinityIggy]

Do people actually think Monahan is a better #2 than Backlund?

Because he's not. Without Gaudreau he's not even a better #3 than Ryan.

Kind of depends what you expect out of your number 2. Lots of teams use the 3rd line C in the way that we deploy Backlund.

I would agree that both Backlund and Ryan are better away from the puck than Monahan. Who you want where is relative to the makeup of your team though.

 

[Flameshomer]

Do people actually think Monahan is a better #2 than Backlund?

Because he's not. Without Gaudreau he's not even a better #3 than Ryan.

oh THERE you are. lol Is Monahan even our 3rd best RW at this point?

 

[OvermanKingGainer]

Kind of depends what you expect out of your number 2. Lots of teams use the 3rd line C in the way that we deploy Backlund.

I would argue that the way we deploy Backlund is in building up strong goal differentials.

Eichel / Barkov
Backlund
Ryan

just seem like more balanced teams than always having to worry about your Monahan line.