I have never said Monahan is elite. He is a fringe 1st line center at best. That's widely known by everyone. However, he is also the best available option at this time and Calgary is not rebuilding. Nobody is going to trade Calgary a better established center than Monahan in a package involving Monahan, that's really basic logic. So a retool involving upgrading Monahan on the fly is not plausible. Now there is the 'option' of trading Monahan for futures that include a prospect with 1C potential like Turcotte, Glass, or Patrick. That is called a rebuild. If Calgary decides to rebuild they are guaranteed not to be making the playoffs for a few years and ticket sales take a massive drop (assuming live audiences open up again in the next year). In 18/19 when Calgary was eliminated in 5 games to Colorado, they made a net income of 3.6M. Roughly 30% of the leagues income comes from gate revenue so if Calgary takes a major hit in gate revenue they will be loosing money every year, all this while spending billions on building a brand new stadium for the 2025 season. Tell me if you were a fan of the Red Wings right now would you buy season tickets? Would you have bought them during the Datsyuk era?
However, there is a solution to not loosing so much money. Keep the core and make adjustments in different areas to try again next year. Try a different approach. A team doesn't need an elite top 10 center in the league to make a deep playoff run and we've seen it happen many times. San Jose in 15/16 and 18/19, Nashville in 16/17, Vegas in 17/18, NYR in 13/14, NJD in 11/12, the list goes on and on.