I made it pretty clear my concern is about his play. It’s been implied 1) that I didn’t understand it 2) that I just have something against him personally and 3) that I don’t care about results. I genuinely asked for stats to support the notion that he’s elite - I was given one and I wondered if it didn’t show that he was very good rather than elite. I was told that he has shown the ability to be elite in stretches and glimpses and assured that he will do so again and more.
No, I implied that absolutely no-one understands fully the game of every player myself included. Or actually I did not just imply that, I explicitly said that loud. The best analysts out there make usually better job that us fans, but nobody is perfect and everyone has blind spots for certain types of players, and *therefore* we need to check the results.
Also no-one implied that you don't care about the results. That's ridiculous. My post was made in good faith and with all the respect and zero hostility towards you. Also at least I didn't imply that you would had anything personal against Laine. There is one obvious hater on the thread (and "Lazy Laine" is not the only target of his), but you certainly aren't.
However, I provided more than one stat. There is hardly just one stat that could tell someone is elite or not.
It also might be that we have different opinion about what is elite. Last season there were 1004 skaters on the league. Some top-30-50 of them must be pretty elite. Some top-10 of them superstars like Johnny. Top-1, maybe top-3 might be generational (Crosby, McDavid).
In addition to stats I did provide, jepjepjoo provided etc., there is a fun one. All time Columbus Blue Jacket top list sorted by PPG. For Laine, that includes his by far worst season, and all the worst parts of that season. Also his PPG for this period is lower than his PPG before CBJ. That said, it's not that Laine isn't doing fine on the list nevertheless. Now, is 0.76 PPG elite? It isn't, but his last season would put him 2nd on the list, ahead of Rick Nash that I would certainly regard as an elite skater: