He had two seasons in Columbus where he had the best goal differential of any lineup regular, in fact I think one of those seasons he was the only player to break 50% GF, while the team without him on ice was something like high 30s...he was also scoring at at ~PPG on a team where Gaudreau managed like 0.75P/GP or something. And like it was pointed out the PP was crap, he had like 5 PP goals that season. He had a point on about 80% of 5v5 goals scored when he was on ice. He really did improve his overall 5v5 game in Columbus, you could already see it in 21-22 and in 22-23 it also started showing up in underlying metrics. He also did fine 5v5 most seasons in Winnipeg but had that one real stinker in there which really skewed perception. During his WPG years he was also more reliant on having the right linemates, in CBJ those two good seasons that was not really the case.
That said, I don't think he should be the main playdriver and if he's the best player of your team, you're probably not going to do very well unless you have some serious depth and just happen to have just the right kind of guys to surround him with. But far more likely path to success would be to utilize him as a complimentary player, and I believe he might be about the best player in the league to take advantage of a situation like that. He can make scoring look so damn easy when he has just a little bit of extra time and space. I loved Stastny and Ehlers with him in WPG for that reason, Stastny might have been past his prime but he was still so damn good at making all the right small plays to create that extra bit of time and space for Laine, and Ehlers at his best is a beast at tilting the ice.
In different circumstances his current lack of 5v5 points or crappy underlying metrics might be alarming but as it is, he didn't play hockey for almost a year, is coming off a knee injury AND his most common linemate is a center who missed even more time than him and is coming back from even way worse knee injury. I'm not very surprised these two guys are not exactly tilting ice out there and I'm not sure I follow the logic of stacking all the rust on one line... but yeah it's all just blaming Laine's center again, right?
Laine is far from a perfect hockey player but he's way more competent than just a shot, his biggest problem has been injuries, inconsistency and extended periods of suck when things are not going well. I think the latter has been largely a mental thing made worse by physical problems. The good thing is he looks the happiest playing hockey I've seen him since 2017/2018 or something... he's even celebrating his goals a bit and I spotted a shy smile when he finished the hatty vs Buffalo. Poor guy is probably starting to get embarrassed just blasting them in on the PP.
GTFO with these balanced takes that make some sense, pick a side and stick to your guns!
