That Laine is better than Matthews is not surprising. What's surprising is that Laine, as a 18-year-old, is already better than 19-year-old Matthews. I thought this to be simply impossible, since there is relatively huge age cap right now, that disappears in a few years.
Laine is a 1998 player that has completely destroyed 1997 Matthews on their respective international tournaments, when compared age to age, apples to apples. With a larger margin that Matthews did beat Eichel, for instance.
Laine is obviously raw, but he is a very multi-faceted, multi-talented guy, and once he gets himself to the physical level he needs, you will be blown away with his complete play, his playmaking, deking etc. He obviously has a tremendous shot. Even his haters admit that. But what they do not agree is that he can simply do it all, when on his prime. You could see that if you watched when in FEL he ridiculed 30-year-old seasoned veterans as a 17-year-old.
He is so smart guy, and that's why he has played it simple and had "only" scored goals (and several hits) so far, since he is still lacking strength to do the total domination in NHL. He played that way also in WHC also, off-wing.
Toronto fans should not be disappointed, since Matthews is a beast already. Jets fans are clear winners here, but that's taking nothing away from them or from Matthews. The draft is history already, and the competition is over. Matthews won the draft already. Now it's about who is / will be better in the NHL, and I have a quite strong opinion on that.
Even if Laine scored every game a hat trick, that would not make Matthews any better or worse. They are not competiting against each others (other than for the Calder race, maybe). They are professional hockey players with a great drive to win for their teams. I hope we can respect that.
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