I'm so happy the Habs passed on this guy , not that Slafkovsky looks like a future superstar or anything, but I'm pretty confident he would not be getting scratched in the AHL right now, 1 year ago he was dominating international tournaments that are a higher caliber than the AHL.
I'm not sure what happened to this guy, confidence? Injury? Early development? No hockey for a year ? (It can affect some more than others). I remember people were skeptical how much he proclaimed to practice golfing during the year off and I thought it was nothing, but maybe there were kids who were putting in the work on their own and others weren't, can't be sure but he didn't seem to come back an improved player. Whatever it was, he seemed to almost overnight change his game style and went from dynamic offensive threat who was constantly active to a more stationary "wait and react" type of player and it isn't working for him.
Even when he puts up pts, it's never in the way you want to see or expected from him when he was an ES player. His goals were more off the rush , beating dmen , using his skating and skill - now it seems like he's getting a lot of his pts from set plays in the offensive zone where he is more opportunistic or on the pp where he can still use his biggest weapon which is his excellent release.
It's still really early, but it's gotten to the point where it's not just a blip on the radar anymore, he's been flat out regressing relative to his age group for the last 2 years and his upside as a star is now genuinely in question. I still won't be shocked if he finds his groove, but I also won't be shocked if he's a decent #2 C who can score 25 goals in a good year and not really be any sort of game breaker.
I still wanted him on draft day for mtl and I was a little disappointed they passed him up , worried that the Habs would end up getting clowned for passing up a "sure thing" in order to take a high risk/ high reward player. When he fell to 4 I was a bit more confident already because I knew no matter what happens it won't be just the Habs who made the mistake.
Now it looks like it was a good idea to steer clear of him. Again, it's far too early to make any solid projections but the entire last 2 years has been disastrous for his projections as an nhler