Also, why, as many people have said here, do some players "need time' to adjust and adapt to "The System", while Johnny "Far from elite" Oduya is fully able to step in to our first pairing on opening night. Is he a smarter player than Chabot? How does anyone even know this?
I am not the biggest Nick Paul fan, but the fact that he was sent down immediately when healthy without any game action is very bizarre. Seems to me that this roster was set in stone from the very beginning. Very little intrigue, very little competition, probably a good reason why the last 3 preseason games were so terrible. Players already knew where they stood.
I think all the talk about adjusting to the system was more for a) when the whole team had to adjust when Boucher first started, and b) when guys were acquired at the trade deadline and had no training camp or practices.
Oduya had a full training camp, and wasn't playing with a full roster of guys who didn't know the system, so while he may still need to work his way through learning a new system, it's not as bad as everyone figuring it out at the same time, nor is it as bad as coming in to game action with no run up.
Chabot currently isn't adapting to a system, he's adapting to playing his off side, and the pro game (he mentioned being told in Bingo that he can't do rim arounds anymore like he could in junior). There are things that become habits in CHL that don't work in the NHL or the AHL, so he needs to get those out of his system.
Wrt very little intrigue or competition, what about Formenton making the team out of nowhere? That doesn't sound like set in stone from the beginning to me.