Is this the best list of players coming off an ELC where they have taken this long to get a contract? i feel like there are an unusually high number of guys left here not signed.

This is highly unusual. But it's clearly related to a shifting market for these types of young players with a ton of potential that have had success in the NHL but have only been playing a few seasons.
In the past, typically these players would get bridge deals. Following the McDavid contract a lot more are getting contracts befitting franchise cornerstones right away.

i just feel like this crop of young guys is unreal. i dont remember a rfa class this deep.

There's been RFA classes as deep, but they're usually signed before September. A lot from this crop are not signed already because of the reasons I laid out above.

really? i mean i cant think of a year where this many high quality guys were all up from elc at once.

I went over the past 5 years and picked out all players on expiring RFA deals that had over a half point a game and there's not much variance.

2019 = 27 players
2018 = 24
2017 = 27
2016 = 26
2015 = 29

I think you're just not used to seeing these kind of holdouts in the fall.

*edit = didn't count guys who only played a handful of games

For a second i thought you said a point a game and i was very confused lol.

I re-ran the numbers and I also realized you did specify you're ONLY referring to players coming off ELCs, so I ran those numbers as well. In that case, there is a huge uptick this year.

Tallies includes players with a half point per game or greater in the season before the deal expired. Must have played in at least 25 games that season.
All RFAs
2019 = 28 players
2018 = 24
2017 = 27
2016 = 25
2015 = 30

RFAs coming off ELCs
2019 = 22 players
2018 = 11
2017 = 11
2016 = 13
2015 = 14

and the ones coming off elc are almost more elite this time than other years. just feels likes its a ridiculously strong rfa class that we might not ever see one this deep again.

Possibly. There could be a recency bias there or even a bias based on predicting all these guys will live up to their potential. It's really hard to gauge what kind of hype past classes had compared to the hype of this crop. And we have concrete information to see how past crops panned out compared to an unknown with the current crop.

For comparison (ELCs only)...
2019 has Point, Matthews, Marner, McAvoy, Rantanen, Aho, Tkachuk, Werenski, Trouba, Guentzel, Boeser, Laine, Meier, Tuch, Connor, Schmaltz, Buchnevic, Labanc, White, Konecny, Kapanen, Vrana, Kerfoot
2018 had McDavid, Eichel, Nylander, Larkin, Domi, Reinhart, Mantha, Ehlers, Bertuzzi, Kase, Hinostroza
2017 had Panarin, Draisaitl, Pastrnak, Gostisbehere, Drouin, Teravainen, Horvat, Arvidsson, Sheary, Wennberg, Burakovsky
2016 had Kucherov, MacKinnon, Barkov, Scheifele, Gaudreau, Forsberg, Monahan, Rakell, Hertl, Trocheck, Rask, Ristolainen, Jenner
2015 had Tarasenko, Stone, Huberdeau, Klingberg, Hamilton, Zibanejad, Gallagher, Bjugstad, Granlund, Saad, Galchenyuk, Nelson, Toffoli, Spooner

You could be right.

This summer was really the perfect storm of RFA'S. The number of exceptional 2016 draft picks who debuted in 2016-17 was quite high and there were also a bunch of 2015 picks that played their first season a year after being drafted. Marner, Provorov, Rantanen, Zacha, and Meier just from the top 10 in 2015. Add in Point from 2014 and you have the greatest and deepest RFA class in NHL history.