This. I am fine with the notion that healthy Laine is the more valuable piece but I really struggle to see him returning Necas alone. Yes getting out of 6 years on KK is probably value but at the same time he is still young and his AAV isn’t horrible. I just cannot see Laine, publicly wanting a fresh start, bringing back that kind of return at all. Yes, wheb he’s healthy he’s very good. At 45 games per year? His value may be the most over inflated I’ve ever seen. There’s this cult at HF that still believes Laine is the better goal scorer than Matthews and Ovie.
Rumor: Something brewing between CAR and CBJ?
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Fro
Cheatin on CBJ w TBL
That's definitely on me, I read "he's trying to make a trade"...I don't know how I misread that
hockeykicker
Global Moderator
- Dec 3, 2014
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Not much worth responding to in this thread, but please stop with the "the best ability is availability" trope. That is bullshit. Ask any GM in the league and I guarantee they would take a legitimate top line talent who's available part time over a player with no talent but 100% availability every time. Such a tired line.
Lt Dan
F*** your ice cream!
I'd take Konecny all day over Laine, at even money too, the only part thats tough is Konecny's term. When Laine's not scoring (which with his inconsistency is often) he's useless. Konecny might not put up as many points but at least you know every night he's going to be a motherf***er to play against. Reminds me of a poor man's JT Miller. Those are the kind of players that win you cups.
Being a PPG player isn't as meaningful as it was 5-10 years ago when Jamie Benn won the Art Ross. Now the elite players are putting up 90+ points which Laine's never touched. You can't use the linemate excuse either when Columbus brought in a 100 point playmaker to play with him
You couldn't be further from the truth. No GM wants to roll into the playoffs icing a roster that's $10m less than the cap because of players being out
Yeah Johnny went from 115pts to 60 when he got to play with the cast that Laine has been playing with. And you say teammates don't make a difference. Johnny unfortunately takes the same space in PP that Laine should be in so they have not been able to make a good PP unit. Jackets use a LHD (Werenski) as the PP QB and he's a shoot first player. To get the most out of Laine you need a RHD pointman on PP and Laine on the left. CBJ has failed in exploiting his shot on PP consistently.
Who said anything about $10m? I'm saying talent is more important than having a pulse, filling a roster spot, but not providing any other value. The literal statement "the best ability is availability" is simply untrue. But people parrot it because they think it sounds cool.
If he was making 2-3M his agent wouldve been fired and Laine would have one of the best deals on the entire league.
56 points in 56 games making 2-3M/season
FFS
I do that a lot. That or type out a whole reply and come down with a sudden case I don't give a damn enough and delete it all. Especially in these Laine threads.
It's nothing but rehashing the same argument over and over and over.
This feels like a dumb argument. If a player has “no talent” but is available 100% of the time, they’re also probably making like 800k. If you’re making 8M+ (10x) I’m fairly certain it’s a lot more important to the GM that you actually be in the lineup. You’re basically saying “any team would rather have McDavid for 41 games than John Scott for 82” which is the biggest “no shit, Sherlock” ever written. But would I rather have Necas for 70+ games or Laine for 50? Availability does matter. No one is suggesting that because Laine is oft injured that we’d want Derek Dorsett and Ryan Prust over him, but we are suggesting that playing barely over 50% of your games impacts your value… and we’re 100% correct.
Werenski played 70 games last year and 13 the year before. Laine played 18 last year and 55 the year before. How many of the games either have played in have even overlapped? The maximum possible is 31 and I’m guessing it’s closer to maybe 20 over the course of 2 years? Not sure that’s the actual problem…
Both have had awful time with injuries and that's been a big problem. #1 D and F missing for major parts of seasons, sometimes at the same time.
What would you say has been wrong with the PP?
A general lack of talent when the top two players are unavailable? There’s good youth obviously but not many kids can step in a run a PP and with those two missing nearly a full season each, how do you get your top PP into any kind of rhythm? Ideally you’d like the perfect setup, sure, but the NYR PP has been one of the tops in the league running almost 100% RH players. They make it work because they have 5 high end players on the top unit. CBJ has good players but you need experienced players as well, and ideally to be able to roll the same unit out consistently until they can gel and find their way. With your top guys always out, it’s impossible to do that.
tarheelhockey
Offside Review Specialist
If you sat down and made a list of all the skills/responsibilities that distinguish a C from a W, you would have an exact list of the weak spots in Necas’ game.
Brind’Amour, who is ALL about the wingers who backcheck and step in for faceoffs and share the puck with their linemates, has made it clear through his lineup choices that he trusts Necas to play C about as much as he trusts him to play goalie.
Which is to say, the Canes are going to be dreadfully thin at C no matter what. It’ll be Aho and three guys who can’t skate. So it actually kind of makes sense that they would at least try to become more cap-efficient at that position, and take a risk on a winger who has some C experience and perhaps some unrealized potential left in his game. It would be a very Canes approach to the problem.
As for Kotkaniemi, it seems far fetched that they could get out from under that contract via trade, but that exact scenario seems to play out every year. There don’t seem to be actual untradeable contracts in this league. It would make sense for them to at least explore the idea with a GM who clearly believes in Kotkaniemi and is still on good terms with everyone in Carolina. Of course it might not get anywhere, but the existence of a conversation would make sense.
Johnny and Patty are supposedly such great players, paid like superstars, and yet in order to suceed... need linemates better than each other?
If a player is so one dimensional that they can't play more than 1 spot on the PP then they really aren't the superstar you're making them out to be
$10m is roughly what Laine makes.
And if you can't understand nuance in a post then there's no point in continuing. Like no shit sherlock, Laine is more valuable than a random 4th liner. But when compared to a similarly paid player who's shown maybe slightly less ability but way more availability? It's the easiest decision ever
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Obviously linemates matter. If more than one person in a line can draw attention to themselves it's easier to get chances as a unit. Everyone benefits from good linemates. Not exclusive to these guys.
They have tried different combinations on PP. Sure, Laine can still score goals and create offense from RD position but it's not optimal. Takes away onetimer.
Laine makes his linemates better, so I don't know what you mean by "one dimensional"?
You know what the most repeated criticism about Laine is among those who actually watch him? It's that he should shoot more and try to do less. Focus on the one thing he's better at than anyone else.
This would require linemates doing a bigger share of the things he's now expected of doing, like carrying puck over neutral to O zone and being the last forward out of D zone, staying back to cover for D rushes, making plays.
But I'm sure you get a better picture of the player by stat watching
Is Laine trying to do too much because he's a great player, or could it be he's trying to do too much because teams are taking away his shot and he has to improvise. That's what I mean by one dimensional. He has his shot. Great. Take it away and suddenly he needs better linemates?
Most players play better when they get to play with better players. What earns players the big payday is the belief they can do it without players better than them.
So either he's so great that he can indeed do it all (in which case this thread wouldn't exist, because what team would be dumb enough to trade a player that good?) Or maybe he's not actually as great as you say he is and that contract just might be a problem
He, like any other player would benefit from not doing it all, it's a team game. That's why he was so great with Aho, he had another legit elite hockey player with him who could generate space and chances for Patty. It worked both ways, a symbiosis.
There's no trade yet. There's a Nashville and Montreal thread too and not all of them can possibly happen at the same time so what do these threads prove? Well, definitely interest.
You've said his value is "future considerations" so you must then think that nobody has offered even that so that's why no trade so far.
I hope CBJ isn't dumb enough to trade him, especially for "future considerations ". I don't think D-Wad is interested in potentially being the guy who traded away an elite player for nothing. Something like that would become his reputation. But of course there is the part that Laine himself wants a trade so that gives D-Wad incentive to trade him. Not for nothing like you suggest. You're just undervaluing and mischaracterizing him.
It makes sense that 5 RH players would work well with each other on the PP, or 5 LH players.
You'll always have the RH QB to RH one timer option (A LHQB would need to pull the puck back to pass to his left, and the shot lane will close in that amount of time).
And the spin on the passes goes in the same direction, which makes it easier to handle. And it's the same direction as the spin on the shots, which speeds up the velocity of the one-timers.
Werenski was one of the highest scoring 5v5 D last year but he hasn't been productive on the PP since he was a rookie. He relies on movement to make space and score, but in static position on the PP, he's awful. He's the #1 reason the Jackets PP has sucked for years, I'm sad to say. There is a tunnel vision issue, he doesn't seem to know Laine is there to his left. It's hard enough for a LH pointman to tee up a RH one timer but especially hard if he doesn't see him.
They don't have chemistry. They're both puck dominant players. Gaudreau needs to have the puck most of the time and Laine thinks he needs to have the puck on his stick.
I think Laine letting players like Gaudreau carry the puck while Laine goes and gets open would be a very welcome thing for the team. I think it's been Laine's choice to play as the dominant puck carrier.
When Laine isn't feeling confident in his shot he will pass up perfectly good shooting opportunities. He loves to feel it on his stick and carry it. He's played very well with players like Boone Jenner and Gus Nyquist. Laine fits with guys who fetch pucks and drive the net. He did not fit with Gaudreau who needs the puck more.
Kind of odd that your question precludes any in between. There are only either problem contracts or players who are so great that no one would ever trade them.
The truth is that he was the Jackets best forward for a couple years, really the best two years of his career (though Jets fans hate that). But he is frustrated with the losing and the injuries and wants a fresh start, and after being in Columbus through a whole rebuild, nobody seems to be taking that personally. The team also needs to give those minutes to younger scorers like Fantilli and Chinakhov. They have so many young players that need the opportunity.
Jumptheshark
Rebooting myself
Theodore450
Registered User
- Sep 10, 2013
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Unless Laine wants out. Jackets should keep him.
They are filling out their Centers.
A good coach should be able to turn that team around
They are filling out their Centers.
A good coach should be able to turn that team around
Watching almost every Canes game of last two playoffs, they absolutely should have a ton of interest on a guy who can potentially create a goal out of nowhere just with his shot alone. The upside is they play him with Aho and he really takes off, you're looking at two potential 40 goal scorers in the same line, both of which can also make plays. A nightmare for defenders, if you play to Laine's shot too much, you give ton of space to Aho. Could be a glorious combo for the Canes and there's some history there though it's from the juniors, but that was a legendary U20 line and Laine and Pulju were so young they still had to wear cages.
I don't think most people realize just how good Laine can be and if the expectations on his overall game are as low as they seem to be reading HFboards, he'd likely surprise quite a few people. His 21-22 & 22-23 seasons fly really under the radar, his P/GP in 21-22 was in a league of it's own among CBJ players and 22-23 it was a basically a wash with Gaudreau, 0.97P/GP vs 0.95P/GP or something like that and I honestly think when Laine played he was overall better than JG. CBJ has not been a good team.
There's some big question marks though, the injuries blah blah, but enough has been said about those. More interesting for me is I'm not sure how well Laine would fit into the Canes system. His cycle game used to be downright bad and while it's better these days, he's at his best on the rush and Canes seem to hate creating anything on the rush unless they're on the PK... so worst case he really struggles in that system and if the injury trend continues and he has a stinker year, then Canes are wasting a lot of cap space on a guy who's not working out for them.
There's definitely risk there, but IMO out of all the teams in the league Canes is probably the one who should be most interested in Laine because if it works out for them, he could very well be the guy that pushes their offense to the next level, so the reward would also be high. Maybe they are at a point where they figure the risk is worth it. Of course the level of risk also depends on the potential deal and if it includes any retention etc.
I don't think most people realize just how good Laine can be and if the expectations on his overall game are as low as they seem to be reading HFboards, he'd likely surprise quite a few people. His 21-22 & 22-23 seasons fly really under the radar, his P/GP in 21-22 was in a league of it's own among CBJ players and 22-23 it was a basically a wash with Gaudreau, 0.97P/GP vs 0.95P/GP or something like that and I honestly think when Laine played he was overall better than JG. CBJ has not been a good team.
There's some big question marks though, the injuries blah blah, but enough has been said about those. More interesting for me is I'm not sure how well Laine would fit into the Canes system. His cycle game used to be downright bad and while it's better these days, he's at his best on the rush and Canes seem to hate creating anything on the rush unless they're on the PK... so worst case he really struggles in that system and if the injury trend continues and he has a stinker year, then Canes are wasting a lot of cap space on a guy who's not working out for them.
There's definitely risk there, but IMO out of all the teams in the league Canes is probably the one who should be most interested in Laine because if it works out for them, he could very well be the guy that pushes their offense to the next level, so the reward would also be high. Maybe they are at a point where they figure the risk is worth it. Of course the level of risk also depends on the potential deal and if it includes any retention etc.
