Strawman.
You're on this crusade along with a certain Coach concerning development. Your thesis is that rushing a player to the NHL cannot cause any damage to a career, ever. It's a really specific and curious stance. Maybe I'm strawmaning your point myself, but it's been thousands of posts on this forum, dating back to last year, from countless posters, including yourself, and me on some occasions.
No, that's not my thesis at all...my thesis is that it's impossible to pinpoint the EXACT cause of what damaged a player and in the absence of evidence, advancing theories that said career was damaged because it was rushed, is as fluffy as saying the opposite, that it was damaged because he spent too much time in the AHL.
And yes, I intentionally presented a strawman argument because the argument that players are damaged exclusively because they were rushed, is just as much of a strawman.
So now, the goalposts have moved to defining the term "slow-cooked" (I'm not saying you personally moved them, just that it's now the focus). I believe this is not a constructive debate, because the term is subjective, it doesnt have a clear-cut meaning. It's goddamned food analogy ffs lol.
100 agreed. I said as much that it's a debate of semantics...people can define "slow cooked" differently.
See above referenced post
That is not even close to what i said but i don't see any point in continuing this discussion when you are doing it in bad faith. How does it differ from what I said?
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I'm mostly concerned about the D+1 season of a player. Reinbacher is developing somewhere else in his D+1, and for me, even if it would be for just one year before asking him to join the club, it shows at least some sort of patience and caution from management.
On the other hand, you have #20. He was played right away and is struggling mightily. The dude is talented, but he's overthinking everything right now (probably because his confidence is shot).
There are obvious reasons why dressing a player at 18 years old in a crazy market like Montréal is not a good idea. The media, the pressure from the fans. Wouldn't you agree?
But have you considered the possibility that Reinbacher will also struggle in his D+1 season? or that whenever he does make his NHL debut, regardless of how his D+1 season went, he will also struggle?
Struggling IS a part of development....not ever player is Connor McDavid off the bat, that in itself is not necessarily a sign that development has stalled or has regressed.
I would agree with your last statement that dressing a player at 18yrs old in this market is very risky, but that's only if you're terrible at managing the messaging as an organization. Fans/media expectations on players don't have to drive your evaluation of said player.
Clearly the organization and the coaching staff are evaluating Slafkovsky on a different scale than fans are.
Now, what would be the downside of playing an 18 yo Euro 1st round pick in Laval at the start of his career, and reassessing every other week or month. Would it have been damaging to act cautiously, considering the history with KK and Galchenyuk (one is fine, one is not, but both have left and are of zero use to the Canadiens, and both were rushed at 18).
Like you said, KK is fine...Galchenyuk has SERIOUS off ice issues. That wouldn't have been any different if he started in the NHL at 19yrs old like he did or if he started in the NHL at 20 or 21. He didn't take the job of being a professional hockey player seriously.
Full stop.
Seriously, what would be the downside? He'd be too good and get bored? Then... you call him up. Doing this backwards, though, is way more delicate. You risk affecting his confidence even more by sending him down.
You're asking the wrong question...the question you should be asking is what is the upside? Is it for him to rediscover his confidence?
Then OK...but taking an NHL player and sending him down to the AHL to reclaim his confidence seems counter-intuitive to me.
For me it's not about the risk of having them bust. I think that it's very difficult to isolate the definite factors behind a failed prospect. It's about what is the most rational decision on day one of their D+1 year.
Yet we DO IT ALL THE TIME whenever we say a prospect was "rushed".
I agree, it's incredibly difficult and really, impossible to really isolate the definite factors behind a failed prospect, see my first response to you above with regards to "my thesis".
Now maybe you get my angle here.