I could say this of every prospect of every archetype. You can say the same for Lindstrom and his comps. You can say the same for Parekh and his comps. You can say the same for Demidov, Helenius, Yakemchuk, and every other eligible player and their comps. None of these players are “likely” to become their best comps. Catton is no different.
But it’s typically only one archetype who gets unduly knocked for having “bust” potential, even though every single player has considerable bust potential. Most other archetypes, people salivate over “what they could become”. But with players like Catton (and, yes, Perreault, Benson, etc), instead, people reach for every reason they can think of as to why they’re unlikely to reach their potential. And they’re not untrue concerns! But that same level of scrutiny & concern doesn’t get applied to other top prospects.
I think this is kind of missing the crux of the issue, by focusing on it being about a "boom/bust" factor, rather than what it often really boils down to.
Frankly...in a lot of cases, these smaller, extremely smart, high skill players are often actually a "safer" bet to make it to the NHL in some capacity. Heck, big "power forwards" tend to be about as boom or bust as it comes. But that's not really what the sliding or perceived devaluation of smallish skill players is about.
The critical piece of analysis missing here, is that a large portion of it is about what happens
between those two extremes of "boom" or "bust". What is a player's more realistic range of outcomes, and what is their value in that realm?
It's not really about those 99th percentile outcomes of hitting their absolute "ceiling" or absolute "floor" as a complete and total bust.
What really matters, is that "meat" of the curve. What happens if that player ends up in the far more likely middle ~68% of potential outcomes? What is
that player's value going to be for your team? As a contributor to build around, or as a trade chip to go out and get what you need in an established player.
That's where you can often get some perceived skew toward bigger, physical type players. Because what happens if a guy like Catton ends up being a small ~40pt "tweener" with lots of smarts and skill but not enough juice to be a star scorer? Contrast with say...a guy like Lindstrom, maybe his hockey IQ and vision really hold him back and he's just a 15G-30pt middle six winger with size and speed. Which one is more "valuable" to most teams?
There's usually a fair bit of wiggle room in that range...but that's what a lot of teams and scouts are
really assessing. With their actual jobs and livelihood on the line, it's not always about just "swinging for the fences" on every pitch. What is a prospect going to be worth and contribute if they end up somewhere around halfway between "total bust" and "absolute ceiling". A more common and realistic expectation or projection range than talking about black and white boom/bust outcomes.
And in that equation...due to the way the game of hockey is played, small skilled wingers and little offensive defencemen just often do not tend to fare as well as other types that are generally perceived by fans as "overvalued". There just isn't as much utility, or room for smallish, creative, riskier, east-west high skill players in the bottom half of most coaches rosters.
That's often a factor even with very "smart" management groups and scouting staffs, more so than just "hurrr durrr dinosaurs and biases hate small players just because".