Agree with all of this--calling fans with stats-informed views 'nerds' and presuming they haven't watched or played enough hockey is just silly. It feels a bit like being back in the playground at recess, in grade school, after getting too high a mark in math. Ah, how I long for those good old days...
I haven't had a chance to watch much hockey this year, but it seems as if most of Scheifele and Connor's points have been on the PP, 3vs3 and 6vs5. If so, they should definitely continue to play together in those situations. And giving them another month to see if they can reverse their poor 5v5 record is not the worst idea. But, given the struggles of the second line, giving Connor a chance to give them a spark at at 5v5 makes sense. And it could be either Ehlers or Perfetti who switches with him (I'd prefer Perfetti).
'If it ain't broke don't fix it', is not a great way to approach professional anything. You always have to be looking under the surface for problems and at the numbers for insights that aren't visible to the naked eye(sorry anti-statsers).
I'm much less worried about Arniel in this area, as I suspect he would mostly agree with with this approach. The season is young, so we will see...