You're completely ignoring how those guys are used compared to Larsson. Larsson starts a lot more ES shifts in the defensive zone and gets 0 PP minutes. Also, his most offensively gifted regular linemate is Kyle Okposo. He actually showed good chemistry with Skinner over a handful of games when the lines were juggled because of injuries and put up a good stretch of points, but Kreuger hasn't gone back to that for whatever reason.
E: Comparing to Bozak and Eller. I have no problem ceding Coyle is better, though, again, I always thought of him more as a winger than a center.
I don't think anyone is ignoring how these guys are used. But I think just focusing on defensive zone starts is a really misleading way to look at a player's worth.
Everyone admits that Larsson is good on faceoffs, gets tough assignments and posts good possession metrics on a bad team. But teams that win in the playoffs get 30 or more points from their 3rd line centers. They just do. You can't roll out 2 scoring lines and 2 nonscoring lines and beat the best teams in the league.... Try to find a recent Cup winning team that had a #3 C that had less than 30 pts: Bozak- 38, Eller-38, Bonino- 37, Vermette-38,
Stoll-27,
And the defensive zone start thing is a bit misleading. BUF isn't a good possession team, so they are going to have more defensive zone starts as is.
Now factor in that Eichel is at best "ok" defensively and by a huge margin the best offensive center on the team... he's going to get the bulk of OZ starts. BUF's other C options like Rodrigues/Johansson aren't guys you are going to give tough assignments to and you'll want to feed them as much OZ starts as possible. That leaves by default Larsson and Girgensons to do the DZ starts. They aren't too good offensively and they can do defense way better than MoJo and Rodrigues.
But for the good teams, you have guys like ROR and Bergeron et al who can play in any situation so they don't have to be fed OZ starts and can take DZ starts. Those teams don't need Larsson to take tough matchups because they'd rather have ROR or Bergeron on the ice a lot, even against top lines, than they would to have Larsson on the ice.
As a 4th line guy to throw out there and not get killed when the 3 scoring lines need a break ... absolutely there are playoff teams that can use him.
PS- And Coyle has taken pretty much the same # of faceoffs this year as Larsson. His linemates have fluctuated a lot during the year but most of the time he's been the center on the 3rd line with guys like Heinen, Bjork, Debrusk and Ritchie as his linemates.