It depends on the management as it depends on Laine himself. Should they choose to use him as a secondary scoring threat like last season with limited minutes, I'd say he'd score something like 70-80. If he's in the first line (or an actual 1b line as opposed to 2nd line) playing 19+ mins per game then he should close in for 100 points. Laine is severely underrated passer, in fact I don't know if anyone in the team is capable of executing a hard tape-to-tape backhand pass as well as he can (and of course even forehand it's even easier). During the last year he relied a lot on himself in terms of production (by scoring goals) but he has that playmaking aspect in the game as well which is easy to see, since he isn't a volume shooter at all and always keeping an eye open for other players moving in to position. I remember that one sick goal from his rookie year where I think they came in from the rush with Scheifele (and Ehlers I think?), he got the puck in a perfect grade A scoring chance, but instead of doing the obvious he just made a quick pass to Scheifele who was also skating towards the net and he had seemingly easy task to just tap the puck to the open net. Absolutely nothing a goalkeeper could have done to prevent that. I doubt anyone saw that coming, I certainly didn't. Nice display of creativity & fast thinking. The goalkeepers fear him enough to keep them immobilized just to avoid giving him any sort of advantage in the close range.
Anyway I guess the very first games should unfold the plan they have for him this season and that should give us some picture of what's to come. Right now anything can happen and nothing can be taken for granted.
