Yeah but atm we don't need a tier under, We need a star. Back when MB made the comment what we needed was a tier under. We already had Price a likely HOF goalie, Subban a norris dman and Patch a top 10 goal scorer in the league.
Patch was 4th in goal scored (17th in points) from 2011 to 2017 behind Ovy, Stamkos and Pavelski playing with AHL players. People really don't give enough credit to Patch what he did playing with the likes of DD and Weise is really impressive. So just a tier below center would have been fine back in the days. ROR, Zibanejad, ... anybody better than DD really which was not hard to ask.
But atm i feel like we need a star. Caufield is not there yet. Maybe he will but atm he is a tier below. Same for Suzuki. Again they could both still become those top guys but atm they are a tier below. A lot more goals are scored now than back in the Kovalev or even Patch days so you can't really compare their stats with those. 1 ppg in 2024 NHL is not that impressive. It's almost the 80ies again.