They help with games by themselves, but also if a team has a weak PP it means the other team isn't afraid of going on the PK.
Player Discussion Patrik Laine: Part 2 - Healthy Living Edition
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They help with games by themselves, but also if a team has a weak PP it means the other team isn't afraid of going on the PK.
He's potentially going to be the 5th best forward in our top 6 next year, that's a good problem to have when he's essentially the best PP weapon in the league. Two goals from leading the league in PP goals with half the games played of everyone around him. Like it or not PP goals are often the difference between winning and losing games. Last year's cup winner and runner up had the top 2 PP goal scorers in the league.
Larkin in Detroit was the first non-playoff guy on the list to not make the playoffs at 12th. Meanwhile Crosby at 8th was the first ES goal scorer to miss the playoffs. Hyman was the only cup finalist in the top 14, Verhaeghe and Reinhart were top 25.
The PP is part of hockey and Laine is a cheat code. There's tons of poor defensive players who make it in hockey. The Oilers had Evander Kane in their top 6. Verhaege is no defensive wizard. Kucherov is useless defensively, you just need to find a center who can insulate Laine at ES.
Lots of contenders and recent cup winners are built around an insane first line, decent second line with one great player, and good defensive bottom six forwards. Plenty have one-trick ponies in the lineup. Vegas won with not too impressive of a forward group. They had insane team defense with only Stone and Eichel as real first line players. Though I guess Barbashev kind of put their top 6 over the edge in the playoffs and they did spend like 20 mil over the cap with loopholes and did get career years out of a bunch of guys who fell off afterwards.
Larkin in Detroit was the first non-playoff guy on the list to not make the playoffs at 12th. Meanwhile Crosby at 8th was the first ES goal scorer to miss the playoffs. Hyman was the only cup finalist in the top 14, Verhaeghe and Reinhart were top 25.
The PP is part of hockey and Laine is a cheat code. There's tons of poor defensive players who make it in hockey. The Oilers had Evander Kane in their top 6. Verhaege is no defensive wizard. Kucherov is useless defensively, you just need to find a center who can insulate Laine at ES.
Lots of contenders and recent cup winners are built around an insane first line, decent second line with one great player, and good defensive bottom six forwards. Plenty have one-trick ponies in the lineup. Vegas won with not too impressive of a forward group. They had insane team defense with only Stone and Eichel as real first line players. Though I guess Barbashev kind of put their top 6 over the edge in the playoffs and they did spend like 20 mil over the cap with loopholes and did get career years out of a bunch of guys who fell off afterwards.
Laine played a complete game yesterday and clearly looked like he wants to be a difference maker 5-5. If he can continue to work on this he will be a point a game player. Tons of talent there and it all comes down to working on his skating and getting healthy. His knee injuries have slowed him down. He needs to be surrounded with an elite centre. Hopefully they can trade for one in off season.
With Laine and Caufield we could have two 40 goals scorers in the line up next season. Didnt happen in a long time
Well Laine needs to be healthy for that to happen, which hasn't been the case for a while.
Everything seemed to get better when Laine returned from his pre-season injury and Carrier was acquired.
Yup no doubt, but being useful for more than ~4 mins a game is pretty damn important in hockey.
Neat, never asked you to. But pretend the guy with over 50% points on the PP and no defensive ability is a net positive for anything but his PP time.
I laugh at anyone who thinks we will buyout Laine next summer.
Guy is cheat code on the PP. It's insane. He took forever to get that shot off yesterday and it still didn't matter. Absolutely ridiculous. He's improving at 5 on 5 so that's encouraging to see.
This year he really has been a one trick pony but that's understandable given the injuries he's coming back from. Moreover, if your one trick is scoring goals, it doesn't really matter that much.
I mentioned this in the GDT... it's going to be really interesting to see what happens to his contract. Right now we're an offensively starved team so those goals are of the utmost importance to us. But more players are coming and goal scoring should be a little easier to come by. How much of a premium do the Canadiens put on that PP work? It's going to be really interesting to see how that shakes out. Moreover, how much can he improve over the offseason for 5 on 5 play. He really needs to address that if he wants to make 8 million again. Going to be a really interesting storyline next year.
This year he really has been a one trick pony but that's understandable given the injuries he's coming back from. Moreover, if your one trick is scoring goals, it doesn't really matter that much.
I mentioned this in the GDT... it's going to be really interesting to see what happens to his contract. Right now we're an offensively starved team so those goals are of the utmost importance to us. But more players are coming and goal scoring should be a little easier to come by. How much of a premium do the Canadiens put on that PP work? It's going to be really interesting to see how that shakes out. Moreover, how much can he improve over the offseason for 5 on 5 play. He really needs to address that if he wants to make 8 million again. Going to be a really interesting storyline next year.
Who are you talking about? Clearly Laine has defensive ability, so you aren't talking about him.
As a fun fact Laine was the top net positive 5-on-5 skater when he was on the Jets. It might be that towards the end he was only the 2nd best after Ehlers, but nevertheless he was TOP-2 or TOP-3 and clearly net-positive, so his team scored more goals when he was on ice than he was scored against (not true so far for him this season, but there aren't that many net-positive skaters 5-on-5 for the Habs this season anyway, Suzuki being the absolutely brighest star)
Also even injured, he is better 5-on-5 than his most common linemates in Montreal. Does that make him good? No, but just that he isn't as bad as Dach and Newhook for instance on 5-on-5. And when he is healthy, it shouldn't be close. Get him healthy, maybe including a knee surgery he skipped to be able to play, and give him some proper TOP-6 linemates and he should be net positive on 5-on-5 again like he used to be.
He has been mostly terrible at 5 on 5 this year. I don't get how people continue not to see this. But it's totally understandable considering that he's recovering from injuries.
He's gotten better since the tournament.
He has a great one timer but that is about it, he is not at all our most talented player since Kovalev imo. Both Suzuki and Caufield have more overall talent than Laine. They both are better skaters, have better hands and have higher IQ's than Laine. I would also argue than Caufield is a better overall shooter and Suzuki, while not at Laine's level in this regard is a very good shooter himself.
Hutson and Demidov will easily surpass him as well imo.
It depend's what you mean with terrible.
As I said, he has not been good 5-on-5. Only better than his most common linemates, for example.
Stats don't lie, here are 5-on-5 goal differential, and you can see Laine has been pretty average, and only 5 guys have been winning their 5-on-5 game.
Btw, just for fun there is stat for all situations GF & GA this season. Yes, this is apples to oranges and hurts everyone who plays PK and does not play PP, but anyhow, it seems that Laine has been on ice for 37 goals for, 27 goals against in total, contributing clearly for the Ws. Not a surprise that the 1st line leads this stat as well.
You need to stop using stats as your absolute arbiter of truth. Laine is a terrible defensive player and always has been. He has been in every coaches dog house for exactly this reason. I remember back in the day when a similar ridiculous argument (+/-) was being used by Ribeiro sycophants to support their claim that he was a better defensive center than Koivu.
How can you watch these games with his lacklustre defensive efforts and possibly come to any other conclusion? I guarantee you that MSL can't stand this guy. Perhaps he puts in a better effort next season but he is a brutal 5 vs 5 player.
He has generated close to no offensive production this year at 5 vs 5, so according to you he must be playing otherworldly defence in order to be a net positive 5 vs 5 player...........stats are only there to provide questions for further examination, clearly there is another reason than him being Bob Gainey lol.
Yup. Not a liability, he's a big boost to the team. Like his style/appearance on ice or not, he moves the needle in the right direction
You need to stop letting your personal feelings overwrite facts.
Suzuki and Caulfield are certainly more effective at this point, though they too would nosedive with significant injuries. Caulfield took a step back to 28 goals last year, it's because his shoulder was hurting him the first half of the year.
Laine is doing what he's doing with a week knee, and has also had multiple flu episodes, I think two which will lead to some loss of strength. He's playing with leftover linemates. And he's doing well. He's transformed the Habs into a playoff team.
I think Suzuki has the highest IQ among the forwards. By a comfortable margins. But IQ is only the most important ingredient to effectiveness, not the only ingredient.
I think if Laine recovers nicely this summer, he can be a 40-40 player next year -- from the second line.
40 is not average. It's bad. 50 is average.
Going into the tourney, Laine's was in the bottom 20 players in the league possession wise. But you shouldn't have needed numbers to see that he was a turnover machine and couldn't hang onto the puck. Moreover, his linemates did much better without him than with him (if you're looking at Dach post late December - before that his numbers were as bad as Laine's.)
On the flipside, Laine has been arguably the best PP man in the league. It's not like he isn't contributing, he is. But people have to make believe that he's been solid at even strength... no he hasn't. But that's okay. You expect that from a player coming back from a long layoff. And he's imrpoving - at least eyetest wise - I haven't looked at his numbers since the tournament but I would be really surprised if they weren't better.
Not sure why you'd say this. Stats are fine to use. And they back up that Laine has not been good at 5 on 5 this season.
As I said many times, there is no denying the man has talent. That shot is all world. Even if he just played as is he's valuable to us.
How valuable? Not 8 mil worth. But if he improves his play next year then it's a different story. There's no reason he can't hit 40 goals with the right center and playing with Demidov. But he needs to be engaged and he needs to work a lot on his conditioning over the summer.
In any case anyone is wondering, what LG means is that Laine was in the bottom 20 players in the league for corsi, a stat that is modelled on +/- and has the same failings but counts shot attempts rather than goals.
Corsi is +/- but with shot attempts substituting for goals. It's a statistic with superior precision at the cost of inferior accuracy.Corsi is not +/-.
Again though, stats weren't needed. He was brutal.
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