It's just your comment that the Jets would be better off without him? He's already acknowledged as one of the most dynamic players in the league. Hasn't finished his ELC and has already signed a below market value contract to stay with the team.
It would be like saying I don't like Laine's board battles and possession numbers so maybe it would be better for the team to not have him?
That's crazy talk.
You can have issues with his play style but to make it seem like he is a detriment to our team will get you ridiculed and laughed at.
I think people are sometimes really overreacting on some comments here, just because they don’t exactly like the main point that someone makes.
I didn’t honestly say that Ehlers is just plain bad and completely useless to the Jets. But I pointed out that he does make deployment kind of more difficult, as there seems to be a really small amount of players that he seems to fit really well with. It doesn’t make it any easier that Laine has been so far pretty similar in this.
Also my point was that his linemates have pretty much so far suffered (especially latter half of last season and this season) from his blazing with blinders on. The problems have been really substantial on the 5 on 5 play during that time. And even having Wheeler or Perreault on the same line with him didn’t really change it to a lot better, at least last season. So far it has seemed to me that Ehlers is completely Scheifele dependant (which I admit definitely that Laine has been pretty much too).
And still my point with all this was that as the league has gone to this crazy overrating of speedster type of players, it could just be in that way much more useful to trade Ehlers, as most likely it would be possible to get very good return in a trade like that. It for sure didn’t mean that he is no use to the Jets as the player he is right now.
But if he will be a long term Jet, I just really hope he would use his speed and pretty good hands to become a great playmaker first of all. That is what the Jets are sorely missing really, as even Scheifele is not that much a pure playmaker, although he can be absolutely great with it.
I just don’t like the style that Ehlers has been playing with and especially the way that his development went from the beginning of last season to this season is something that doesn’t fit the Jets future needs in an optimal way. I still believe that by changing his approach to the game and using his speed better and more selectively, Ehlers could really become a much better playmaker, and that is what the Jets are absolutely needing at the moment.