Laine: rebuilding completed, finishing started, getting ready to open the window

Kovalev.

Vanek.

Those were the first two names that came to mind when I read the news of Patrik Laine’s arrival in Montreal.

And I’m probably not the only one who had this idea. From what I’ve heard on the radio, Louis de Ville Mercier seems to have thought of it too!

With his eye-popping natural talent and what the Habs gave in return – almost nothing in all three cases (Balej, Collberg and Harris!) – Laine’s arrival is reminiscent of those two former NHL greats who had some great, great times in the metropolis.

But like those two rare birds, the Finn also comes with a reputation: as a player with a questionable work ethic who doesn’t show up every night, as a hard-to-coach individual, as an individualist. Journalist Kristina Rutherford talked about all this back in 2019 in this excellent feature article based on a candid interview with the big winger.

However, in his own way, the tenebrous winger, much as Guy D’Aoust described Kovalev at the time, is also a great concerto pianist and not a saloon musician performing the same refrains on command night after night to the delight of the thirsty.

So, with Laine, when inspiration strikes, watch out!

18 goals in 12 games, including a legendary five-goal game on five shots in November 2018 after (finally) unplugging from Fortnite !

Only problem, those 18 goals in the month of the dead accounted for 60% of his production that season.

Nevertheless, by April 2019, he was already completing a third 30-net NHL campaign. And so, despite a meager nine goals after the holidays, Laine became the^4th youngest player in history to score 100 goals in the best league in the world, after Wayne Gretzky, Dale Hawerchuk and Jimmy Carson.

In other words, talent is literally coming out of his ears.

In fact, considering his young age, his almost unrivalled shot among his peers, and his magical bursts reminiscent of the heyday of Mario Lemieux (check out YouTube to see for yourself), fans should be even more excited about Laine’s arrival in 2024 than they were about Kovalev’s in 2004 and Vanek’s in 2014.

We can already anticipate the frenzy in the Bell Centre when the Habs’ new #92 grabs the puck and strides through the neutral zone in an attempt to score this kind of goal:

What an end to end goal by Laine 3-3 #CBJ #Blackhawks

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With 204 goals and 388 points in 480 games, statistically, Laine is clearly a star player in the NHL, in the category of Filip Forsberg and company, as evidenced by his statistics per 82 games since he turned 24 :

The career point totals (per 82 g) of a dozen NHL forwards in their primes (24-31) making between $8-9M AAV:

Laine is the best goal-scorer of the bunch. This may help explain why no salary was retained – Laine’s salary is commensurate with his career production.
*Player ages are… pic.twitter.com/htymyH09Sp

– Grant McCagg (@grantmccagg) August 20, 2024

I don’t know about you, but when I look at these names, I think Kent Hughes’ new acquisition is rather an odd one out.

Laine isn’t just an impact or star player like most of the names listed above by McCagg, he’s a superstar talent.

In fact, for a player of his talent, which a specialist like Simon Boisvert considered at the time to be as great as Auston Matthews’, the fact that Laine has never recorded more than 70 points (in his second season, at the age of 19) and has only had one point-per-game campaign (56 in 56 in Columbus in 2021-2022) is a real aberration, a kind of anomaly.

A more favourable context in Montreal

Now, at 26, if Laine’s body and brain are healthy and hold up – and there’s at least good reason to believe that they haven’t been in this good shape in a very long time, according to his own words – the Finn could well enjoy the best season, if not the best seasons, of his career with the Habs.

But, in addition to his physical and mental health problems, this statistical anomaly can certainly also be explained by the unfavourable contexts in which he was placed, things over which he often had little control.

In Winnipeg, Laine skated little on the first line, having to make do with Bryan Little as a center on the second unit.

Then, in Columbus, if you don’t count last season when he played just 18 games, he played just one campaign with Johnny Gaudreau, the rest of the time on a diet of Jack Roslovic, Oliver Bjorkstrand, Max Domi, Boone Jenner, Cam Atkinson, Jakub Voracek (at the end of his career) and Gustav Nyquist.

Not exactly Gerard ‘ s “big tanks”.

In short, considering that Sheifele and Wheeler weren’t too fond of him and only played with him on the power play in Winnipeg, Laine never really had the chance to play in such a healthy environment with such a good group of forwards as Suzuki, Slafkovsky, Dach, Caufield and soon Demidov. All top-5 or top-10 players in their respective draft years.

Finally, if we want to make a quick comment on the contribution Laine could make, with a “normal” season of 35 goals (his career average over 82 games), Laine will above all take a lot of pressure off Caufield and Slafkovsky. He’ll allow them to play with their sticks looser from the start of the season, which really wasn’t the case last year…

Then, by betting on an equally “normal” season from the other key players, Laine should at the very least help the Habs get back into the playoff race by radically improving their goals-for/goals-against differential, which ended at a sub-arctic -49 last spring.

In short, with the arrival of a 26-year-old sniper like Laine, we’re no longer rebuilding, we’re building, we’re adding, we’re even starting to finish.

A balanced, dangerous and terrifyingly mature core

While I’m at it, I’m also going to fulfill a promise I made last June, namely to come back to you with an analysis of the Habs’ core following the draft and following THE Kent Hughes summer trade we’ve all been waiting for.

In fact, Maxime Truman and I respectively analyzed and discussed the very logical arrival of the big Finn at the beginning of the summer… and here he is in town!

So, I’ve been saying it for a few years now: THE recipe for winning the Cup – a recipe that Hughes and Gorton don’t seem to dislike from where I’m standing – is to count on as many players as possible who are worthy of the top-15 in the draft… or very close to it.

The latest Cup winners all point to the need for a dozen or so such players, with a few top-five-worthy dividends thrown in for good measure.

In other words, you need a solid core made up of a happy mix of superstars, stars, impact players and good complementary players to have any hope of winning. You need quantity AND quality.

With the summer additions of Demidov, Hage and Laine, the Habs are starting to look a lot like a hockey club that relies on a young core that will clearly be worthy of the elite.

So we’re going to pull out our methodology and our June chart again, this time comparing the Habs’ improved core with that of a couple of immediate rivals who have also theoretically completed their rebuilds: Buffalo and Ottawa.

Category	Value (points)
Generational	20
Elite/superstar	15
Star	10
Impact	8
Complementary	5

Of course, we’ll have to do a bit of projecting, especially for the youngest players on the three teams, but it’ll remain realistic, even conservative in the eyes of some:

Categories / Cores	Montreal	Ottawa	Buffalo
Total value of core forwards	81	67	70
Generational
Elite/superstar	Slafkovsky Demidov	Stützle
Star	Suzuki Wool	B. Tkachuk	Thompson Cozens
Impact	Caufield Dach	Batherson Norris Giroux Pinto	Tuch Peterka Benson Quinn Ostlund
Complementary	Newhook Roy Hage	Perron Greig	Kulich Helenius
Total value of core defensemen and goalkeepers	54	41	53
Generational
Elite/superstar			Dahlin
Star	Reinbacher Hutson	Chabot Sanderson	Power Byram
Impact	Matheson Guhle Montembeault/Fowler/Dobes (L)	Yakemchuk Ullmark	Levi / Pekka-Luukkonen
Complementary	Xhekaj / Engstrom Mailloux	Zub	Jokiharju Samuelsson
Total core value	16 players: 135	13 players: 108	15 players: 123

It quickly becomes apparent thatthe Ottawa Senators’ 2021, 2022 and 2023 draft picks were very low, and it already seems to be costing them a lot of money. Among other things, they “gave away” first-round picks in 22 AND 23… Ouch.

As you can see from the table above, there are a few noteworthy impact players, and Yakemchuk could surprise us, but there’s simply not enough quality meat in the land of the By Market and the potato fields. When you have to include veterans showing signs of wear and tear like Giroux and Perron in a core, it’s rarely a good sign…

We’ve clearly put an end to rebuilding too soon, and now we need to patch things up, an analysis Mathias Brunet has already made on a number of occasions.

For their part, the Sabres boast an impressive number of quality players in all positions. But the absence of real superstar forwards could eventually prevent them from becoming serious contenders.

Nevertheless, they’ll be ones to watch. One or two successful trades and who knows…

In short, trying to be as objective as possible, and although a few elements may change, it seems clear that the Habs’ core is both bigger and, above all, more balanced and of better quality than that of their two immediate rivals.

We’re not hallucinating. We can clearly see three trios and three pairs of defenders filled with quality players above average for their position.

And while some may find me generous and/or optimistic with Slafkovsky, Demidov or whoever, others will no doubt find me a little stingy with Laine, Caufield, Dach, Hage, etc.

So, it must all add up to democracy somewhere!

Finally, if we go back to our June chart in which we compared the Habs’ already solid core with that of Stanley Cup finalists the Oilers (12 players/118 points) and the Panthers (13 players/114 points), we have no choice but to conclude that the improved core we now have before us will be nothing short of terrifying when it matures.

There’s no scientific pretension here, nor any guarantee of anything, but already we’re talking about a group of around 16 players worth +/- 135 points in attributed value!

That’s off the scale!

Conclusion

The worst, or the best – it depends – is that, as we’ve just done with the addition of Demidov, Hage and Laine, the core could still improve a little over the next few years. The Habs still have two first-round picks in June 2025 and a total of 15 picks in the first four rounds of the next two drafts.

In short, not only is the core already frightening, we already know that we’ll have enough to maintain and feed it for a very, very long lease. Options, options and more options for Hughes and Gorton.

So, the rebuild is complete. The infrastructure is in place, the finishing touches are beginning, and very soon we’ll even be able to think about opening the famous “window”.

Geoff Molson can believe in his Cup .. .

In fact, that’s exactly the idea, the famous narrative, the story the Habs will ultimately want to sell on Crave next month: we can believe in it!

But, whatever the marketing narrative, after a rational analysis of the material in place, count me among the believers.

As usual, we’ll be talking about this juicy piece of business on Facebook and Twitter!