Quoting: yycofred
Plenty of reasons that he would be worth that. Flames making this trade are clearly pushing to win, that pick should be bottom third of the draft which is a crap shoot, this trade may have been better suited with MEP and a 1st but I think a Boston, NYR, Carolina, San Jose, Canadiens all make better pitches. Monahan can't drive a line, he is repeatedly thrown into the lineup with guys that he is expected to drive and it doesn't work, good middle 6 C but to say he's twice as much as Dvorak is craziness.
Monahan scored at a 26 goal and 56 point pace in 19-20 in a down year. From 2014-19 (excludes rookie and pandemic years) he AVERAGED 31 goals and 68 points per 82 games. He also has 7 20+ goal seasons actually under his belt, and 3 30+ goal seasons. Compare that to Dvorak, who has never actually hit the 20 goal or 40 point mark, and whose career high pace is 25 goals and 45 points. Does he have upside? Sure, but I doubt he beats Monahan’s average. Deciding to overpay because he might breakout like Lindholm is stupid, he hasn’t done that so you evaluate his value based on what he has done, and then hope for the best. Thinking he might break out on a better team is the reason you would consider bringing him in, but it doesn’t raise his value. Monahan also played this year injured, and with a literal deadweight on one of his wings (Ritchie, Simon, Bennett, Leivo, etc. were all mediocre at best, not one of them deserved to be higher than the 4th line). This year he’ll come back healthy, and with 2 of Tkachuk, Gaudreau, Coleman, and Mangiapane on his wings, all of whom are playdrivers that should be able to create some offensive chemistry with him. I would expect that a bounce back to his typical 30-35-65 form is very likely, and if it does then he’ll be better than Dvorak would be, without sacrificing a 1st and our best C prospect. I wouldn’t hate this scenario if we were giving up like, two 2nds and MEP, or a 1st and Zavgorodniy, because I do like Marchessault and Dvorak, but there’s no universe where we should be giving up Zary in a Dvorak trade, let alone Zary and another 1st.