You don't want Laine.

Don’t really see the point in this for the Jets. I don’t think Määttä is enough for the Jets to want to swap Laine and Debrincat.



I don’t think you’ve watched him this year. He’s noticeably better defensively and has been passing and setting up guys really well. He’s been using his body more and giving a lot more effort while forechecking and backchecking. He’s over a PPG and leading the Jets in points.

Winnipeg takes that and runs all the way to Nunavut

Lol no they don’t. They decline this so fast. Laine has been noticeably better this year already.

Debrincat has been nearly as good and he's been miles better the past 2 years.

agreed, but we'r looking at ceiling... Debrincat is very good but i'll rather take my chances on Laine

past 2 years mean nothing.. it's present and future what counts

Points remain an EXTREMELY poor stat when quoted unmodified. Let's use Laine as an example to run through a few reasons. It'll be fun!

1. Points say precisely nothing about defense. This one's pretty self-explanatory: points only occur on goals scored by your team and are unmodified by goals, shots or chances against your team. In Laine's case, points miss that before this year he had yet to have had a year above replacement-level defensively, per EvolvingWild's GAR metric.

2. Points are EXTREMELY usage dependent. 6 of Laine's points came on the powerplay, which means a different coaching decision could nix 1/4 of his points production, without him doing anything different. And that's without factoring in how playing with elite teammates and seeing large amounts of icetime can bias the results as well. Laine's scoring rate at 5v5 (he has 13 5v5 points) could this year have produced: 15 (Schiefele's TOI), 11 (Roslovic's TOI), or 5 points (in 16 games, Bourque's TOI). All that changed between these scenarios is TOI, which player's can't directly control. NHL coaches are USUALLY smart about TOI allocation, but I doubt you could find someone who says they're perfect. No reason to punish a player for their role. And that's before accounting for teammate impacts (spoiler alert, they're pretty big).

3. Points are VERY luck-dependent. Shooting percentage is one of the most volatile stats in the NHL and forms a huge part of goal numbers, (and goals aren't even the least
predictive part of points, secondary assists have even more variance, to the point where they are essentially useless in skater evaluation). In Laine's case, the 20-point drop he experienced from 17-18 to 18-19 is entirely explained by his shooting percentage dropping by 6 percentage points (from 18% to 12%) and by his secondary assists falling from 14 to 3 (11 points right there). He wasn't really playing differently, but his points were way worse. Not really what you want from a stat.

Points work better when restricted to primary points (goals+primary assists) and used as a rate (e.g. P1/60). Even then, there's an argument to be made that advancements in regression models like EvolvingWild's RAPMs and Micah McCurdy's Magnus 2 more firmly measure individual offence by accounting for things like teammates, competition, score effects, etc. While using them in concert makes sense, it can lead to a tendency to double count offence, especially when using something like GAR, which is based off of the RAPMs.

Laine's defence has improved this year, but it's still not a strength of his game. He's mostly what he's always been, a great shooter that struggles to drive play at 5v5. That's arguably worth enough to make the deal make sense, since Laine's shot is one of if not the single best in the league, but still.

Stop using points. I don't care what Sportsnet says.

The actual deal pretty much depends on how much faith you put in Laine to keep up his defensive improvements this year. Cat was a bit better than the Human Slapshot in 17-18, and a LOT better in 18-19 when The Right Circle that Walks like a Shot Chart's shooting went on hiatus for a year. This year Ehlers's Sniper Rifle's had the edge over the Feline Phenom thanks to his defensive improvement, but it isn't clear how real that is. I'd say it's a fairly realistic deal if Chicago thinks Laine's improvement is real and Winnipeg thinks it isn't. Pretty fair.

The NHL needs more good nicknames.

I wouldn’t make this deal. The Jets signed Laine to a two year bridge deal. I don’t see the Hawks being able to keep Laine after his contract expires. DeBrinicat has develop into not only goal scorer but a decent player maker. Imagine Dach and DeBrinicat playing together in a couple of years.

I honestly think the Jets would want more to give up Laine.

Observing DeBrinicat this season, it seems his timing is off bit. I don’t think he shoots enough when he has the puck. His hesitates and the opportunity is missed. His shots have missed the net a lot this season.

Cat's cut down on the shot volume a bit this year compared to last, but he's been trending down in that metric since his rookie year. He's actually missing the net less this year, averaging 0.35 more shots/60 despite averaging 0.88 fewer unblocked attempts/60, for a total of 1.23 fewer misses/60 if my math is correct. The bigger difference is that his sh% has fallen dramatically, from 18.64% last year to 7.14% today, despite his expected fenwick sh% (expected goals/unblocked attempt as a percentage) only having dropped by 0.07 percentage points. It's a lot like Laine's down year, actually, an elite shooters shot goes on holiday for a while and they're left flapping in the wind. Dunno if there's a confidence thing going on, but if there's one thing analytics tells us, it's never to bet on a sudden change in sh% being real, because 95% of the time it isn't.