I still don't ever see other fanbases talk like this.
I still see it. Johnsson's and Kapanen's stats are prorated to if they had more ice time and PP time. And that's apparently how Dubas has to pay them.
Other fanbases just don't seem to do this.
It's a slippery slope. Do we have to prorate every nhl players stats to if they had 20 minutes of ice time a game, and 4.5 pp minutes per game? Or just leaf players?
Why do we prorate Matthews stats to if he had 20 minute per game and 4.5 pp minutes... but not say, Ennis?
Ennis in on pace for 20-ish goals/82 with 10 minutes toi per game and amost no PP time. If we double his toi and give him 4 minutes of PP time a game, is it outrageous to say he'd at least double his goal totals? So do we have to pay him as a 40 goal player now?
It's not as slippery as a slope as you make it out to be when you take previous body of work into consideration.
On a per-minute basis, Nylander was a top-5 PP producer in his rookie year, was 11th in PP points overall. You can easily make the link between increased ice-time and increased production.
In his 2nd year, he was one of the best ES producers on a per-minute basis and was tied for 38th in ES production (tied with guys like Blake Wheeler and Mikko Rantanen). Again, you can make a pretty solid link between increased ice-time and increased production. He's matching other big names there.
The problem with Kappy and Johnsson is that there's no previous body of work to take into consideration. Now you're 100% correct in pointing out the hypocrisy in regards to contract negotiations (and I've yet to see anyone refute you) but your assessments on the player's ability on ice has a few errors.
From the data I see, increasing player's ice-time when they're already playing above 20 minutes will have very little addition to their actual production. But players who are around the 15-16 minute range see a sizeable increase in production when they get bumped to the 18 minute range. This is very much up for debate however as it's very hard to differentiate the usage as a whole from favorable offensive minutes like PP time/OZ starts etc..