I think it's a tad bit ridiculous to say your Solo queue rank (league/elo) doesn't say anything about a player's skill. I speak from my own, and my brother's experience with league. When I first started ranked lets just say I had no Idea what I was getting into. I immediately lost 12 games, 950 elo woot. Now of course I complained to my brother (Platinum) about how bad "elo hell" was and he told me he was once in the same position, but eventually he discovered there was no hell. You just suck, or you don't. That or you are one really ******* unlucky bastard whose teammates troll every game (unrealistic).
Now I just had enough of Ranked, I blamed my teamates and went back to normals for practice. After spending a couple days of hardcore practice and watching streams, I decided to go back to ranked. Huge difference, carried 15 games in a row with Jax, now Im sitting at Silver 3 1319 LKScore. I realized the change that I had underwent, so many little things that I did differently that just came with practice, better game concept, awareness, knowing champions, combos, timing, limitations, when to push objectives, when to back off, how to communicate, just **** like that. There are many things that separate a bronze 5 player from a silver I player, a Gold 5 player and a Plat 3 player. It's skill. It's your ability to work with teamates, push objectives, win lanes, ward, gank, etc. I'm just going to say, the mind of a plat player works a hell of a lot differently then the mind of a silver player, goddamn brother wont stop pointing flaws out.