It’s vital for any player getting paid $5+ million dollars a year to be beneficial to the team in any way……
you saw laine's name in the comment and immediately got grumpy in the comments. stronger conditioning than pavlov's dogs.
Patrik Laine is not “vital” to the CBJ.
the context there was that johnny gaudreau has almost 3x as many primary assists this year as the next highest CBJ forward, and has only 5 secondary assists. in other words: this team's forward group is incapable of creating chances for their teammates.
some fun numbers going back to the start of 22-23
| G/60
All strengths | Primary A/60
All strengths | Primary P/60
All strengths | G/60
5v5 only | Primary A/60
5v5 only |
Gaudreau | 0.66 | 1.27 | 1.93 | 0.51 | 0.93 |
Laine | 1.27 | 0.91 | 2.18 | 0.95 | 0.65 |
Jenner | 1.14 | 0.38 | 1.52 | 1.00 | 0.40 |
Marchenko | 1.14 | 0.44 | 1.56 | 0.84 | 0.27 |
note that laine's sample includes the 18 games this year where he visibly struggled.
purely factually speaking:
- he has been the team's most productive primary point producer on a per-minute basis over the last two seasons
- the team is 13-21-7 in the 41 games since he was last in the lineup
maybe i'm the crazy one but from where i stand, calling him "vital" to the team sure looks like a fair assessment of the situation.
I’d argue every single other player in the league making the amount of money he does would by more “vital” or “valuable” to the CBJ than he is.
well, those guys aren't on the blue jackets, so