Well written, as usual. Nothing more than the eye test should ever been needed for such a simple-gamed player.
I've always been very vocal here about my displeasure for him being moved into the top-6 in spot of injuries or even depth spreading. In part due to the fact that he simply isn't gifted enough offensively to capitalize more highly than average when playing with high skilled players---He plays the same game in his top-6 role as he does in his bottom-6 role. Yes, this allows him to seamlessly fit in and handily drive possession in a scoring role but you'll notice that he also has no additional offensive gifts that come to surface in this role unfortunately. The real problem, however, doesn't lie within the elements that he doesn't bring in a top-6 role, but rather what his absence to our bottom-6 means to our team's success as a whole. Essentially, my argument was always against using him to fill in for injuries in the top 6 because Raffl's value to bottom-6 far outweighs Raffl's value to top-6---That this arrangement had an overall negative impact on the team in contrast to promoting a more offensively skilled, but less well rounded player into a scoring role, while allowing Raffl to remain in the spot of driving the relevance of a 3rd line. We don't actually have a 3rd line unless Raffl is on it and most recent example being that when he was on the 4th line, the 4th line was actually our 3rd line. I never had many people agreeing with this whole angle for some reason, although on the opposite, I agree there's plenty of merit in promoting Raffl based on individual performance.
We're obviously lucky that Bellemare was selected over Raffl in the expansion. He should never have been up for grabs. His absence of upside is likely the reason he was exposed as well as passed on though. LV had to figure they had plenty of upside in their other selections, or at least enough so that when they looked at Raffl/Bellemare for a bottom role, they sided with the shiny stories of Bellemare's international and league-touted tales of leadership and personability. I guess the decision worked out for everyone though, we got a 5th outta Cousins and retained Raffl, while LV can at least make an argument for Bellemare in their particular roster makeup with results.
Somehow Hextall seems to have used Raffl's role/contract as a template for Weise.... That's a shame...