Personally I play Legan all of the time and I don't think that this matchup is 70:30 at all, I think it's closer to even than most people realize because they have never played a good Link-- although Legan might disagree with me... I'm not speaking on his behalf, I'm speaking from my own experience playing against pretty much the best Link out there.
Most of our matches are very close and almost always come down to the last stock with both of us at high percentages.
Yeah, Falco can reflect everything that Link can do, but if Link plays his midrange game right, he can easily Z-air (which can't be reflected) or punish a reflect because of the lag from Falco's reflector animation.
Laser spam is usually effective, but again at the medium range, he can usually get a z-air off or throw a bomb, often before you can get your reflector out.
The chain grab isn't even an issue-- not only will you rarely 0-death a good Link even if you grab him from 0, but he can just blow himself up with bombs and avoid the CG completely. Once he avoids it, Link can kill you a lot sooner than you can kill him. He has plenty of kill power from f-smash, down air, and reliable kill setups, like bomb to footstool to down air, while Falco has almost no reliable kill setups to speak of.
It's kind of like when everyone thought Falco ***** Snake... then good snakes just started grenade holding until 50% and easily made up the damage and killed earlier because they have better kill power. It's the same thing, just that Link is no where near as good as Snake, lol... but it's the same idea with the CG on Link only less so.
Killing Link can be very difficult for Falco, because he is heavy and has stellar DI. In addition, Link's down air will stop you from ever really using Falco's up-air to kill him-- you can bait a d-air and punish with a Falco b-air from the side, though will cause your b-air to stale a bit.
Gimping Link with Falco isn't especially easy either-- it's not hard, but it's not like everyone says "lawl Link's recovery, get *****" etc. He can easily throw the gale upwards while he recovers, then do his up-b, preventing you from gimping him most of the time.
Link can actually gimp Falco very easily in certain scenarios, because he can Z-air the ledge if he ever forces you into using Falco's Up-B. The 3 ledge grabs he gets from z-air give Link a long time to ledge hog, and Falco will not be able to recover if he is forced to use Up-B.
In the end, I guess it doesn't matter because 95% of Link players you meet are going to suck... but personally I don't think we should be rating the matchup for the bottom of the metagame, we should be rating it for the top of the metagame.
So, with that in mind, I would put this around 60:40 in Falco's favor if the Link is a good player. If the Link is a noob and can't recover or space or do any of Link's required ATs, then yeah, it's at least 75:25 because you will just spike him and he won't know how to recover.
...just my thoughts from playing the best Link out there at least once a week and teams with him at every tournament... I think most people will think I'm ******** though, lol.
Ooh, I can't wait until I argue that DeDeDe vs Link is scarcely worse than 50:50 in the DeDeDe thread... that's going to be a fun one, lmfao.
