How many goals did PLL score this season? Why'd they move Ehlers into Perrault's spot? He was a complete passenger on the Little pp goal. How many has CLT scored? Tanev was also on for the one he passed to Schief. Tanev pks harder to be on the ice for team goals in that role vs pp. also Tanev is a quarter the price.
I'm sorry. Garret I'm being rude and defensive on here to you which is uncalled for. I am too enamored with Tanev who I see as more of as the little engine that could and that makes his working hard obvious therefore my favorite. The little guy who overcame the odds. etc. etc. etc.
Not specific to your questions but things you should keep in mind when seeking out the answers to your question:
1) Don't be fooled by small samples.
2) Related: Don't confuse descriptive with predictive. If the performance we've had so far was predictive, Lowry and Tanev will be our top 5v5 point producers, doubling their normal performances, and the only players scoring at top-six rates. Laine, Wheeler, and Scheifele are all scoring at 4th line or worse rates. How someone did perform and will perform is correlated based on sample size.
3) Just because someone wasn't directly impacting a play doesn't mean they don't indirectly impact. Indirect impacts is one of the reasons why Perreault is as good as he is.
4)a) Coaches are humans and make wrong/poor decisions all the time.
4)b) Because of the multi facets to coaching (evaluation, teaching, inspiring, systems, etc.) a good coach doesn't mean they are good at all facets. Babcock for example is famously good at systems, making him one of the best coaches in the league, and teach while infamously poor at evaluation.
5) Being a better fit on a line doesn't mean that player is the better player.
6) Confirmation bias. Am I looking just at the evidence that confirms my opinion while ignoring all the evidence that counters it.
7) Players have ups and downs in performance as they are not robots
8) Sh% and sv% variance impacts outcomes and infamously impacts management, coach, and fan evaluations (it's how the whole PDO stat was discovered). You generally look at how many good events you remember vs how many bad events.
9) The Big Event (tm). People generally remember only the goals and those who drove the goal (negatively or positively), but not all the hundreds of events that influenced that goal. The other events matter.
10) Usage/QoT/QoC impacts results but also impacts what you perceive. Soft usage means lots of opportunity for good events vs bad events, and vice versa.
I'm not meaning to harp on you... but really I try to be fairly objective here. I don't have a "boy" and Dano is not one, nor is Tanev. I just point out what I observe the facts suggest. I'm imperfect but this is still the best I can do.