I really heavily disagree with this. Skinner has never really put in the effort on defense that Laine has. Skinner is a player who has played nearly the same way his whole career and when he was called to change those habits put in a half effort and also sucked donkey doo-doo because so much of his game relies on cheating defensively and taking advantage of having great playmakers on his line. His bread and butter is scoring on odd man rushes or on the wing on the PP. He's deadly in close and a great finisher, and he can sometimes drive play for himself through his stickhandling, but he mostly is pretty selfish and uses his teammates just as moving pylons he can give and go with. He always wants the puck. His stickhandling is a lot better than Laine's and his goal scoring talent is definitely similar but he's a complimentary player. He NEEDS to have players who can find him when he's open. And honestly if he actually put effort into defense he would probably be fine too because guess what, playing defense and having good positioning and being engaged often leads to odd man rushes which, as mentioned, he's really good at.
The problem is that he doesn't do the things that he needs to in order to succeed when he isn't being put with those players, he isn't engaged, He hangs out on the offensive blue line and waits for someone to get him the puck. And you know, for the most part, that works, he puts up goals and points doing it. But he's still a defensive liability because he isn't McDavid and even McDavid sometimes loses the puck and creates an odd man rush going the other way.
Laine is a different player. His goal scoring is similar in that he's also deadly in close and if you put him with playmakers who can find him when he's open he has a deadly release. His stick handling is nowhere close to Skinner's and he also has the tendency to hold onto the puck too much and try and stickhandle through guys like Skinner does, and it works out about as well for him.
The difference is that Laine is way bigger than Skinner and has a way bigger reach, so he's naturally better at protecting the puck. He hasn't really figured out that his reach means he can often drive the wall and protect the puck but he has figured out that his positioning in the defensive zone can help him score goals at the other end.
His positioning is great for a forward and he's willing to cover the D on the point and allow them to pinch or drive the net. The other main difference is that Laine is engaged defensively and offensively, he hustles and while his forecheck isn't good he can still win puck battles on the wall and a lot of his defensive flaws are prevented because of his solid positioning.
And kind of the nail in the coffin is that Laine isn't really a selfish player. He's a very good playmaker as well, look at how him and Gaudreau set up on the powerplay. He's adept at weaving passes through guys and putting pucks on tape. He's still very much a shoot first guy, but unlike Skinner he has the IQ that most of his passes aren't going wide, the number of drop passes to nowhere or random passes behind the net Skinner does drives me crazy.
But probably the most important difference is that Laine has changed as a player and improved, is 26 and clearly gives a f*** about his performance. I mean he put himself in the PAP despite it costing him tons of money. Skinner is 32 and is pretty much the same player he was in Junior. I watched a lot of him then. The fact that Laine is 6 years younger, has a slightly better contract, and has proven to be way more coachable means a lot. I don't think it's a great comparison because of those things. If you want a Skinner you can go find one in FA pretty easily. I think that Hoffman guy might still be around.
If you want a Laine...well, 26yo guys who have his resume generally aren't available. Laine is because he has an injury history and other stuff going on that lowers his value, but I still don't think Columbus is necessarily going to give him up.
And calling him a 50 pt forward is disingenuous when he's played 50 games the last two seasons before this one. I think
@majormajor already mentioned this as well but he was way more productive with Roslovic and Jenner than Gaudreau or Voracek. He plays best with guys who can take care of the forechecking duties and cycle well, create opportunities off defensive plays, and get him the puck. They don't have to be world class playmakers, he can score from anywhere. He's also already played with Bjorkstrand and looked perfectly fine playing with him. I won't pretend to know everything about Seattle's roster but they have a lot of guys good at that coming up and probably a decent amount already on the roster...and those guys aren't exactly hard to find.
I think Wright and Beniers will hit it out of the park within 1-2 years. The great thing about Seattle's drafting has been that if they hit on even 10% of the players they've drafted they're going to get a super successful player with high upside. They've pretty much gone all in on drafting huge upside guys and hoping they can work on whatever flaws they have. I like that a lot, and I think they're gonna end up hitting on more than one too.
