Quoting: Burnout
Its great that you believe that outscoring is the measure of effective 5v5 play and not more a measure of the quality of the team and usage. Edmonton should keep him in that case. Because I doubt any other team is going to value him the way you describe him.
A decade of overwhelmingly positive contributions. Yes, I'd say that's worth something. It's "Rel" numbers I'm looking at, which effectively is comparing the player results to the team results. It's not a measure if team success at all. "Relative to Teammates."
I.e. someone with a 55 GF% on a team with a 60 GF% would show up as minus-5.
Someone with a 45 GF% on a team with a 40 GF% would show up as a plus-5.
So it eliminates your critique, which was quality of team. It actually penalizes players who are on good teams, because they're being compared to players who have better results. It's easy to get great numbers relative to teammates when they suck. I mean, look at the early Avs results for Barrie - those teams were pretty bad.
"Edmonton should keep him in that case" - yes, I agree.