The standard model actually does not have a whole lot of wiggle room. Suggesting that it has suggests to me that the person asserting it does not have the foggiest idea what they are talking about.
Some people consider the standard model to be a tape job. It can be modified to fit the predictions. But will provide any insights? Thats not necessarily the case. Ability to predict does not equal understanding
IANAP, but IIRC the standard model was born from the electroweak unification effort and in addition to giving some order to the particle zoo, it predicted the Higgs boson. I think that's a pretty important win.
