Player Discussion: Patrik Laine - MOD WARNING IN OP

[Laineux]

Yep only two Finns with 40+ goal seasons. Our great friend "the boss" , Olli Jokinen got close a few times. He got 39 goals one year.

Out of this current super generation I could see two or maybe three players having potential to score 40 goals eventually.

Barkov, Laine, Tolvanen?

 

[PhilJets]

So the Laine kid is one of the players in the cover of nhl.com

1 month to the playoff.

Kids all over will follow Laine. Face of the Jets going forward.

 

[NeverTriggered]

How many years is it going to take for Laine to be a best player in a world? Under 3? He's just too good to be contained right now. Im guessing next season totals would be 65g + 40a if he gets to play with Scheifele.

 

[Kaako Kappo]

How many years is it going to take for Laine to be a best player in a world? Under 3? He's just too good to be contained right now. Im guessing next season totals would be 65g + 40a if he gets to play with Scheifele.

Lot's of potential in him. The question will always be how much of it he reaches. If we works his ass off, i bet he can do some pretty incredible stuff.

Not that he isn't already incredible.

 

[StiffSquid]

Barkov, Laine, Tolvanen?

Yeah pretty much. Maybe add Aho there too. Puljujärvi If he figures it out.

More than likely only Laine though

 

[LucianoBorsato]

So the Laine kid is one of the players in the cover of nhl.com

1 month to the playoff.

Kids all over will follow Laine. Face of the Jets going forward.

You hit the nail right on the head here. To have that one elite, goal/point scoring player is just HUGE for a franchise. Kids will always pick a particular player as their favorite and that will likely lead them to be life long fans of the team they are on, meaning a wider fanbase and more merchandise sales. There is a reason you see Crosby and Ovechkin jerseys in many different cities. Now it will be the Matthews, McDavid and Laine jerseys. Have to admit it was pretty cool to see a young Laine fan in New Jersey with a sign like that.

 

[Laineux]

I remember at point last season when every time Laine got the puck in his own zone it was basically either a turnover or a zip out of the zone.

His overall game has taken incredible steps from last year.

 

[Maukkis]

How many years is it going to take for Laine to be a best player in a world? Under 3? He's just too good to be contained right now. Im guessing next season totals would be 65g + 40a if he gets to play with Scheifele.

It's amazing how the perception of a player can change during a hot streak.

 

[Halberdier]

There has been a lot of BS talks about Laine being bad 5-on-5. Not going to the obvious reasons / roster discussion, I just want to say that:

When you look only 5-on-5 stats, Laine is:
-the 1st for P/60 this season (51st in NHL)
-the 1st for P1/60 this season (37th in NHL)
-the 2nd for P/60 two last seasons after Scheifele (26th in NHL)
-the 1st for P1/60 two last seasons (22nd in NHL)
-the 1st in G this season (tied 6th in NHL)
-the 1st in G two last seasons (tied 6th in NHL)
-the 1st in P this season (tied 43rd in NHL) (Stastny has 1 point more, but played mostly for St. Louis)
-the 3rd in P two last seasons after Scheifele & Ehlers (26th in NHL)
-the 1st in Gdiff this season (27th in NHL)
-the 1st in Gdiff two last seasons (31st in NHL)
-the 2nd in Rel GF% this season after Tanev
-the 1st in Rel GF% two last seasons (1st Stafford omitted since he plays for Boston)

And I repeat, these were only 5-on-5 stats.

I think Laine knows hockey. Also on 5-on-5. And he wins his game, so he is not only scoring goals and points but also taking care that the opponent doesn't score.

I'm not stating the obvious that all those stats are better for Laine when he is not playing ELL line, which did happen prolonged time. Without that, I gues he could be #1 in all above categories.

 

[Halberdier]

It's amazing how the perception of a player can change during a hot streak.

You can check some Laine's 5-on-5 stats during his hot streak (2 first seasons combined) from post above.

 

[Aavco Cup]

 

[LucianoBorsato]

Jets bookends

 

[Maukkis]

You can check some Laine's 5-on-5 stats during his hot streak (2 first seasons combined) from post above.

That's an odd and, quite honestly, very flawed definition of a hot streak.

 

[nobody important]

Taylor to Taylor...

 

[RageQuit77]

"When simple project to track The Rocket Race 2017-18 began to explode out of it's original plans..."

- 'Expanse version 1.1'
- Two new star charts added
- Precursor Races 1980-81 - 1997-97 added (with exemption of Precursor planetoid 953447 Bondra I that doesn't fit in the frame grid coordinates.
- Ovechkin Lockout space sectors missing too because of above mentioned reason
- The Rocket race up to date

It began really be more interesting thing to place all 100 years of goal scoring leaders on the same chart than do just mundane updates to trajectories of current Rocket Racers. Entire star maps of sectors of The Ancient Ones of 50-in-50 era, The Location of 'Richard Prime', and 'Esposito's Arm' etc. are still missing.

Unfortunately my astrogation computer's memory limits are very near now.

But very pleasantly Lt. Commander Laine has now very good chances to find the artifact this year. Go Patrik Go! To the stars!

 

[NotCommitted]

It's amazing how the perception of a player can change during a hot streak.

Well, that's certainly true, on the other hand I feel generally Laine has been downplayed on these boards this season by many people - not that his game doesn't and didn't have issues, just that they've been somewhat exaggerated. Now after this blazing hot 10 games, he has most goals in the NHL since entering the league. Think that over for a minute, this is a player who just a couple weeks ago needed to drastically improve his skating, play along the boards, general effort level etc. etc. yet he can lift himself to number 1 spot in goals scored over the past two seasons within a 10 game frame. How can he do that if he's been so mediocre and how is this hot streak possible if his game has so many obvious flaws?

And it's not like this hot streak is some isolated incident in his career this far, he had a couple stretches last season when he was hot and played with a similar confidence. The difference to this season is he hasn't took flight for the most part unlike last season - basically he was on a "hot streak" from the WJC to FEL playoffs to WHC to most of his rookie season - yeah there were some lulls and even cold spells in between there, but in general he seemed to be constantly upping his game for the next level of challenge and playing with great confidence. This season that confidence hasn't really been there, I believe there are several reasons for that, some of his own making and some I would argue mostly down to usage. This is the first time this season we are seeing him really hot. You gotta admit he's pretty special to watch during a hot streak

Anyway, I think the best way to honestly evaluate players and their seasons is during the summer, when all the games are played and there's no current emotional investment in how they are doing, then you can mostly forget about the cold spells and hot streaks and just look back at everything as a whole, have some perspective and not judge a player solely based on whether they happen to be hot or cold at the time...

 

[Aavco Cup]

This is different

 

[Halberdier]

I remember at point last season when every time Laine got the puck in his own zone it was basically either a turnover or a zip out of the zone.

His overall game has taken incredible steps from last year.

Last season Laine had pretty much the same amount of turnovers as Crosby. And for sure for both, most of them happened in the offensive zone. Honestly can't remember the numbers, but I guess it was about 1 turnover per game. Not a definition of a turnover machine. Besides, best offensive players tend to have highest numbers of turnovers as well as they do 1-on-1:s.

For sure he might have had a short period of time when that was true what you described.

 

[Do or Die]

I had some earlier posts, about what would happen when Laine started using his body more, and taking the biscuit in closer to the net = ton-o-goals. Can see it now.

 

[Lempo]

Ironically enough the Jets players can only do promos for Chipman's competitors. To do it for him would violate the CBA.

No it wouldn't, but they'd have to be very careful that the money paid from the endorsement deal is in line with the actual work needed on the player's part. Endorsements are ok, but overpaying for doing them is a big no-no.

 

[Ippenator]

Yep only two Finns with 40+ goal seasons. Our great friend "the boss" , Olli Jokinen got close a few times. He got 39 goals one year.

Out of this current super generation I could see two or maybe three players having potential to score 40 goals eventually.

Which ones would you think? I would say that at last some kind of potential for getting 40 in their prime, in addition to Laine, would probably be: Tolvanen, Aho and Vesalainen. Maybe even Barkov and Rantanen, but those two are more about assists than goals, so somehow I see it a bit unlikelier for them to ever reach over 40 goals in a season. With Tolvanen I’m at least quite confident that it will happen at some point. Could very well happen even with Aho and Vesalainen. But lets see....

 

[Halberdier]

That's an odd and, quite honestly, very flawed definition of a hot streak.

I thought that the point of mine would be obvious to you, but apparently not.

I do know that 1 season or 2 seasons are not hot streaks, that should be obvious for everyone.

I did show stats that included all sorts of hot and cold and lukewarm streaks of Laine, and still he is 1st in most 5-on-5 categories listed above, including most important like Goals and Points and Gdiff for this season. That should be somewhat telling about abilities of this blatantly underrated 5-on-5 beast Laine has been for the Jets according to the cold stats, not your opinion that I know differs quite a lot on this subject.

I was quoting you as you said how the recent hot streak changes someones perception of Laine, presumably to something that is wrong/ill-based/impossible/whatever. I just kindly did show you that all hot and cold and in between streaks combined this Laine kid happens to be something that never existed so young for:

1. this franchise (Atlanta/Jets 2.0)
2. any other Finn
3. any other European

and only have been true for handful of Canadian players usually been pretty much GOATs.

If you forget about hot and cold streaks and concentrate on cold statistical facts (points, goals and GF-GA) and then the fact that Laine has been unstoppable at times while being super raw still and still being a teenager, you have to admit it's not out of this world to predict that this guy might be seriously in the discussion about the best player in the world one day. It's possible that it happens, it's possible that it doesn't happen. For Laine it's most possible among all Jets players, among all Finns, among all Europeans (I hear you Kucherov, but still) . Out of those young future "GOATs" only McDavid has so far been obviously on different tier. Against all other youngsters Laine is more like neck to neck or head & shoulders above on comparable seasons.

(I admit to be a bad person so that I added the ridiculous nonsensial "P/60 5-on-5" stat just because Laine is now 1st for that stat also in this season (was 1st I guess 2 seasons combined even earlier) as that happened to be the cherrypicked stat used to have at least something to downplay Laine 1-2 months ago.)

 

[Board Bard]

I saw a Laine interview a couple of days ago, not sure if it was on TSN or the Jets website, where Laine says Maurice called him into his office and they had a talk about the need for Laine to start skating more. Lo and behold, Laine started skating more and his game looks much better. Maurice remarked on it publicly too when he said Laine is skating more, and Laine a couple of times since then has also cited it as something he strives to do. It's something many of the posters here said he needed to do, and it looks like they were right. Hopefully he keeps it up, whether he's scoring bucketloads or not.

 

[Kaako Kappo]

I saw a Laine interview a couple of days ago, not sure if it was on TSN or the Jets website, where Laine says Maurice called him into his office and they had a talk about the need for Laine to start skating more. Lo and behold, Laine started skating more and his game looks much better. Maurice remarked on it publicly too when he said Laine is skating more, and Laine a couple of times since then has also cited it as something he strives to do. It's something many of the posters here said he needed to do, and it looks like they were right. Hopefully he keeps it up, whether he's scoring bucketloads or not.

Man, if Maurice only asked him to come to his office in October and asked the same. He'd have at least 100 goals now.

It's not that simple. Can't be. If it was then both Laine and Maurice are brain damaged. Can you find this interview?

 

[Laineux]