Ondrej Palat was drafted during the 7th round in 2011 and had a full time spot by 2013
Tyler Johnson was undrafted two years ago and is smaller than Nyquist, played his first full season only two years after being signed.
Brandon Saad played 46 games two years after being taken in the 2nd round of the 2011 draft. The following season he played 78 games.
Now let's look at Nyquist, Tatar and Sheahan
Nyquist was drafted in 2008 and finished his first full season this year. Would have been last year, but had to rot in the AHL for Danny Cleary. Thanks Ken!!!!! It took six years for Nyquist to earn a full time spot.
Tatar was drafted in the 2nd round in the 09 draft and just finished his second full season. Four years to earn a full time spot.
Sheahan was drafted 21st overall during the 2010 draft and just finished his first full season. It took Sheahan four years to earn a full time spot. He played 42 the year before.
Nyquist and Tatar are great players, but why did it take the Wings that call them up? Teams that have superior roster's when compared to Detroit have found to way to constantly insert their prospects into the linuep only a couple years after drafting them.
There is obviously no denying Detroit takes longer to produce NHL talent, but how do other NHL teams manage to speed up the process? If Detroit were churning out significantly better players than everyone else, i wouldn't care, but they aren't doing that. Detroit is getting less value out of their draft picks by taking so long to earn a roster spot.
You just changed the entire parameters of your argument, which was that Detroit isn't:
relying on players who were drafted in a similar range to Sheahan, Tatar and Nyquist, but those players were only drafted 1-2 years ago.
Neither of these teams are relying on any such thing right now. And only at one point in the recent past have either of teams done so, which, as I said, was with Saad.
Now, because we all have access to the internet and don't need to rely on a mischaracterization of facts, lets look at, as Paul Harvey would have said, the rest of the story:
Johnson: NHL roster spot
5 years removed from being draft eligible. Nyquist had actually already played 22 games by the time Johnson debuted. The difference? Johnson is a premier penalty-killer and two-way center.
Palat: NHL roster spot
4 years removed from being draft eligible. Also a premier two-way player.
Killorn: NHL roster spot in his
5th post-draft year. (Not surprisingly, he's not a good two-way player.)
Kucherov: NHL roster spot in his
3rd post-draft year, he started his season with the AHL, and, to boot, Tampa tolerated him producing just 1 point in his first 6 games and 3 points in his first 13 games, playing 13-15 minutes per night, which is not something Babcock/Holland would've tolerated from a smaller, non two-way player. Not to mention, Kucherov was taken at the peak of the Red (hockey) Scare. He, like Tarasenko, were obvious talents who, had they been born 5 years earlier, would've been taken higher.
You're basing your argument off of players whose development wasn't sped up at all or are exceptions to the rule. Also, the context in Tampa is entirely different, as they were coming off a bottom-feeding season when they went with the full-on youth movement. They allowed these guys the opportunity to sink or swim.
Thus far, the only case for a player debuting early and becoming a core player quickly is Saad. And if Chicago has some secret for "speeding up" their development process, outside of being an insanely talented team that can afford to insulate youth, then I would love to know why they decided not to speed up the process with Brandon Pirri, Dylan Olsen, Kevin Hayes, Klas Dahlback, Adam Clendening, etc. Same thing with Tampa. Why are they using their magic fairy dust on Kucherov but not on Drouin? And what about the now-shifted Connolly?
You're making a claim about development when your argument is nothing more than a critique of
policy. It is very, very likely that Nyquist and Tatar debut earlier had they been solid two-way players or had an elite physical tool, a la Palat/Johnson. Its also very likely that they would've been impact players much sooner had they been allowed to struggle, without being yanked in and out of the lineup and demoted to less than 10 minutes a game, for 10-20
consecutive games, a la Kucherov.
In short, your argument is not a matter of "can't", but "won't." And no one is saying that's the right policy, but that is the one that was, up until recently, in place.
