Cherry picking like mentioning draftees from 2003?
Cherry picking like focusing on a handful of low-point games in Liiga but ignoring as many games or MORE with much better results.
Exaggerating like telling us he was demoted from his Liiga team multiple times when that is not true; it was once, brief and he killed it for the few games he was down.
The strength or weakness of the 2022 crop is not Slaf's fault.
The Habs picking the guy that the most NHL scouts had at #1 was not a reach.
Playing Slaf in the NHL at 18 in an environment where he did not get the Shane Wright treatment and management had realistic expectations is NOT a "new approach to development". Quite standard, actually.
Blaming his leg injury on being "rushed" is completely unfair seeing as the whole team has been plagued with leg injuries for 2-3 years already, and that even Laval had a large amount of the same luck.
Surprise, surprise, Slaf looked way better at this year's camp than last year's camp. It's just not objective to conclude that he was played in the NHL prematurely.
Note: when a player is ready, by definition this should not be seen as "'rushed". The alternative, perhaps more fair actually, is to stop reading any negative connotation to the act "rushing" if all it means is that a team quickly placed a new recruit in the NHL.
I think people who oppose the decision to place him on the Habs last year love using that word because it is factually true that the player was in the NHL very quickly, so it allows them to slip their conclusion into their argument.
Anyone familiar with debating tactics can pretty easily unpack this, however.
Not surprisingly, the majority of the people saying that Slaf's draft year performances were unworthy of his being selected #1 are the same people constantly harping on the "rushed" narrative. This might be because of human nature - admitting he belonged in the NHL is kind of admitting he had strong qualities right off the bat, which might mean that a #1 selection in a weak year might be justified after all, and we can't have that!
