[SuperMatt18]

I never argued that he wasn't playing on the second line, lots of good players play on second lines.

The argument was he was never a middle 6 forward in the way you were trying to downplay him. He was generally still always top 3 in EV TOI, and he was producing at a top 10 clip at 5v5, PP, and 3v3.

I know how he was used, I didn't need you to explain it to me.

Was he an elite play driving forward - nope. His underlying stats were never great and he was never really a guy that was a huge play driver. But he was a guy that could produce points and generate offense with the best in the game when used correctly. He probably wasn't ever worth $10.5M due to his flaws, but he should easily have been able to continue his point per game page that he's been at for a while, and should have been at least worth around $9M.

And it's not just grabbing his best seasons...it's the 5 seasons immediately before coming to Calgary, which generally coincide with the prime of a players career. What happened when he was 22 back in 2015/2016 is irrelevant to his play now. If you want to go back further he has 554 points in his last 554 games in Florida if we go all the way back to 2014-15 when he was 21 years old, which is still 13th in the NHL in that time frame.

Either way you slice it calling him a "middle 6 forward" is ridiculous. He never played third line, he was always at worst a top 6 forward.