I'm slightly but unavoidably biased for Laine as I'm Finn, being more familiar with his efforts then what comes to Mathews'. I accept that many things here are question of opinion, and that it's nearly impossible arrive to any kind universal consensus here. objective even less. It's sad to see same circle of argumentations are going on again and again in these threads. Why? It's obvious they both are true talents (while I abstain to use word 'generational' as that is something that can be said only from retrospective analysis), that will have both excellent future in NHL, no doubts.
What annoys me most is that persistent 'small sample set' - meme, especially when used as an argument to downplay another player. How these young guys can even have yet anything else then 'small sample sets' at all in their age? Instead it should be already clear that whatever and how small their "sample sets" are, their sets are phenomenal in their smallness measured both by their quantity and quality. Besides, it's seems to me that most of all relevant Hockey statistics revolve exactly around these kind minimal to non-existent sample sets like, goals/points production and -/+, basic stats per one game, on which whole statistical sample sets are based for purposes to evaluate a level of a player, award stars of game, best players of game etc. These guys are top 3 picks exactly because of their "samples"
In both cases, with available career statistics there shouldn't not be any kind reasons to point to mythic "small sets". I've got impression that these young guys would have had play 10 years in NHL that talking about their impressive efforts during their yet short careers would be free from that kind BS-argument.
What is important with these "small sample sets" is that probability of already happened things is 1 (100%), while possible future happenings it's somewhere between 0 and 1 (0-100%), essentially big "IF". In their apparently ridiculously small sample sets their contributions have already proven that its pretty safe to expect that their big IFs are more likely somewhere between 95-100% then 10-30% in long run where ever they might play, but there are no way to ever make that future IF 1 before things really happen.
Why not just watch and enjoy their playing, to see how they collapse that hazy curve of unknown probabilities between 0 and 1 to solid 1, game after game?