It should be painfully obvious it's more important to develop strong than to start strong. Nobody cares that Yakupov had a great start, just like nobody cares that so many star players had terrible starts.
Slafkovsky had a bad start. His first 50 games were very weak and some people believed they had his career figured out based on his PPG. Those posts have started to smell bad and will only get worse. Since early November, Slafkovsky's been out-producing and out-playing everyone else in his draft year. It's called development, which is exactly what you hope for when you draft a kid. How far he develops is impossible to predict. However, what's easy to predict is the people proclaiming him to be "The worst #1OA pick" will be hoping their posts aren't bumped in a couple of years.
We're really not disagreeing here. Slaf has gotten off to a bad start. I think it's more than fair to point out that he's still young enough to develop into possibly the best player from the top of the '22 draft class. But until that happens, it's not outlandish for people to speculate that he may end up being the worst 1OA in quite a long while. The irony is that you're chastising other posters for relying on too small a sample size to judge his career potential, but then insist we only consider his last 20 games or so.
Bottom line.....how many times *truthfully* have you watched Slafkovsky play a full game?
That's not the bottom line. It's a deflection from the question I posed in my post that has yet to be answered. A better bottom line is this: wingers who are drafted 1OA need to produce offensively. Slaf may get there one day if his development goes well. But he's not there yet.
Curious here for him to be removed from the title as the worst 1stov pick.What kind of productions ( points) does he have to produce over the remainder of the season?
Again, a bit of a deflection here from my question. Let's reframe the discussion: Looking back at the 20 NHL drafts prior to 2022, which 1OAs would you put behind Slafkovsky?
For what it's worth I have nothing against Slafkovsky and don't really care if he becomes a perennial all-star or the worst bust since Stefan. The Habs were my childhood team and I still have a soft spot for them.