Laughton looks like he looked last year, couldn't cut it at 3C, passable at 4C, solid at LW. Didn't need Gordon to find that out.
Sanheim was averaging 15-17 minutes, it's not like he went from bench to first pair.
Lindblom was playing as much last spring under Hakstol on the 2nd line as he's playing this year on the 2nd line, go figure.
Lehtera and Weise only played due to injuries (Knight, Rubtsov, etc) and Weal flopping. So far Vorobyev and Varone haven't been better players.
Hagg has his minutes reduced, so did Ghost, MacDonald is playing as much as he was under Hakstol.
I think you're engaged in wishful thinking, the only real change has been Hart and Stolarz replacing dreck in goal.
They're not scoring more, they're not playing better defense, the PK turned around before Gordon, and the PP simply went from an historically low rate of scoring relative to expected scoring to an unsustainable high rate.
The problem all along has been depth and how the talent fits together. And that hasn't fundamentally changed, and won't change until some more prospects arrive and Fletcher makes a couple moves to rebalance the lineup - and we'll have to wait for summer for most of these changes.