I kinda suspect the progression wasnt related to playing center. Just general maturing and a bigger role. I wouldn't mind seeing him back on wing for what I assume will be his last season here
Edit: Oh no! I only now realized that you were discussing about Roslovic, wasn’t it? The center vs winger commenting somehow messed me up. Sorry, but what I now wrote about Laine is still anyway valid, but right now kind of out of context, so sorry for that.
(My comment about Laine as a center)
I in fact don’t believe at all that he has developed suddenly as a player. Such changes don’t happen in one summer. They just don’t. Especially at his age already. The bigger sudden changes can happen exactly through a bigger role change or through drastic linemate and ice-time changes. But Laine has been playing really well with any linemates as a center and with similar ice-time that he has had as a winger. So I really see it that it has to do specifically with the position change.
Offensively the center role does really seem to fit him. He is a great passer and he has also great vision and very good hockey IQ, which are all very important qualities for a center to do well offensively. As a center he can much better control the game and have the puck more, which seems to be important for him to get well into the game. But he can also pass the puck quickly when needed, and as a center he will have more often both directions open for the passing lanes which should make him do even more of the well timed passing that he at best is capable of doing.
As a center he will also not need to do as much of deep forechecking, which has kind of been his weak spot because of the difficulties in his stop and go skating. As a center you can concentrate more in blocking the central areas on the ice and don’t have to be in the same way doing the constant stop and go skating (that will always be Laine’s biggest weakness) as you would have to do as a winger.
Exactly the understanding of the defensive positioning itself has never been the weak spot defensively for Laine in my opinion, but he has played himself still quite easily defensively to a worse position through his lackluster stop and go skating in forechecking because of his difficulties to turn quickly in high speeds. He has also been more prone to tire himself because of this problem.
I really believe that there might be clearly bigger strengths in his game that support playing as a center than as a winger. But the clear weaknesses as a center would at least so far be weak face-offs, playing in front of each goals physically and also how well he will be able to cope with hard forechecking and checking when he has the puck, which has been kind of problematic for him as a winger as well. It will be interesting to see how it goes anyway.
