as gifted as laine is, and as impressive as he looks when you only watch his highlights, he has a bit of the alexander semin disease where he realizes his shot is so overwhelming that he's trying to pick corners with it from all over the ice. i think an underrated element of pure shooting goal scorers is the ability to not miss so badly that you break the other team out of the zone. semin was the worst in the world for trying to pick the short side corner and the puck careening off the glass at high speeds and clearing the zone, sometimes creating breakouts for the opposition and losing important zone possession on a low percentage chance. he's a hell of a player, no doubt, but he's going to have to learn how to play winning hockey. having aho and turbo here who both play very responsible styles would give us a leg up with that, but that's banking a lot on your leadership being able to sell a player on a system they haven't seen work.
when i compare a guy like laine to matthews for example as a goal scorer, putting leaf bias aside, matthews has so many ways to score. i have seen him flatten his blade by turning his wrist over and sort of shoveling a puck towards the net on redirections. scoring goals with his feet in the paint. aggressively hovering around the net for something to pop loose when shots are coming from elsewhere instead of circling off like you see a lot of players do. matthews, to his credit, has taken some notes from john tavares' approach around the net because that's a guy that has made a living being ready for the bounce. laine wants to score one kind of goal. he wants to rip it through the goalie and his commitment to doing those things listed above make him a less attractive option. plus, his size is of virtually no benefit to him. that wouldn't sit well with brind'amour.
