He needed to be given 19 minutes a night in the AHL (along with Kaako) post-draft, especially given the amount of time off between seasons with COVID ruining the draft season.
Yes, they're great young players and they'll put it together eventually, but they're being put in a position where they can't develop their offensive games and they basically just manage their ice time cycling the puck and trying not to mess up for 13 minutes a night.
Lafreniere pre-draft looks nothing like LafreNYR. The moves, confidence, his instinct to take the center of the ice, quick decision-making with the puck, are all neutered. Admittedly, this was all against lesser (younger, weaker, slower) competition, but these traits are no longer visible in his game.
The Rangers are better off (especially now that Kravtsov threw his little temper tantrum) starting almost all picks in the AHL regardless of camp play. That sounds really harsh, but they've proven that they don't know how to develop offensive talent in-house.
In 2 years, he'll be a much better player and I think he'll be capable of putting up 60 points in a season, but he looks like he's losing time to be the "savior" many thought he would be.
If he figures out how to cause some separation between him and opponents while finding pockets of space, he could put it all together very quickly.
When Cally, Dubinsky, Anisimov and other forwards were drafted they all had to "go through the process" and I recall that the front office wanted to see them "dominate at the AHL level" before reaching the NHL. That was verbatim.
Obviously those forwards and others did not have the pedigree of being so highly drafted as Laf and Kakko. They also weren't drafted in the midst of a self-imposed rebuild, that everyone, including the fans were on board with.
On the surface, I agree with your entire statement from front to back.
However, recent times and the events surrounding the first developmental years of these two havent been anything but normal.
The problem is there were/are enough roster spots on these rebuilding teams that fans and even the front office expected these two to excel so they were thrusted in right away. Everyone wanted to see them play and judging where their games were on the world stage, it made sense to take a look.
It also doesn't hurt that a few more tickets will be sold, knowing that you will not only get to see Bread and company hit the ice, but also the young saviors we had never drafted so highly in what is essentially a century-old franchise. We can't be naive about that.
Most importantly let's also not forget what the landscape of the AHL has been since Laf was drafted. Alexis was drafted in October 2020, 5 months after the AHL season was cancelled. Then all they had was 24 games against the same two teams with no Calder Cup awarded. That was the time frame where he really needed to be there.
Its a coalescence of events that thrusted these kids into the prime time and now it would require a super-judicious decision to send them down at this point. I'm not trying to make excuses. In the entire history of this team you couldnt pick a worse 24 month stretch to finally get two top draft picks and try to assimilate them into the NHL level, no matter how great or shitty they are.
So we wait. Probably even longer than we need to and now with the doubt that either of these two will actually pan out to their full potential.
Ill continue to remain positive as well. I've seen countless forwards in this league both present and past hit 23-25 and then take off - and given everything I've mentioned above the rope has to be a little longer the way I see it.
