Carrick also should not have been playing those games. He was terrible.
We could have put Liljegren in the NHL last year if we wanted and he probably could have done as well as Carrick did in those 34 games. Anybody can play in the NHL, but it doesn't mean they are ready for the NHL. We decided to value Liljegren's progression rather than being stupid and rushing a guy who was clearly not ready, like Washington did with Carrick. The next year Carrick spent the entire time in the AHL. The year after, he played in 3 NHL games before coming to the Leafs, who then played him in 16 more games (mostly because we played any half decent looking prospect and had pretty much no one else to play RD).
I'm not going to comment on the rest of your post, but I'm just going to say that referencing Carrick as a "comparable" is not helping your case. By that logic, Brannstrom also sucks because he has only played 2 NHL games by his D+2 year (vs. Carrick's 34) and has not put up amazing production (32 points in 50 games) for a guy who is far more offensive-minded defenseman than Liljegren (or Carrick for that matter). I would also say that if we treated Liljegren like an offensive-defenseman rather than developing him into someone who is useful to the Leafs going forward (i.e. someone who can handle more than just cushy offensive minutes and PP time), his production and surface numbers would probably look a lot better than they do right now. We decided to give him a real challenge, which many other teams do not do with prospects his age in the AHL, and he's handled it well. If other teams did the same thing we did with Liljegren, I bet the gap wouldn't look as large as it does right now.
ok,,it's pretty simple IMO, many respected pundits said getting little grin was a coup , now we have to have faith in our development system and of course,,,,,,,,,,,have something so many leafs fans have little of ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,PATIENCE!!!!!!