Many are, let's be honest. I've been delighted about the fact that people have started picking up on how the Jets handle their prospects, but quite a few posters still adamantly defend the organisation both in terms of who they pick and how they utilise them. For them, it's always the prospect who "got stuck behind better prospects (who wound up getting the same treatment)" and "who weren't good enough". It's never the team's fault, despite us having promoted exactly two drafted prospects into productive roles in the last seven years. Weird, that. It's almost as if they were afraid of being wrong about their team.
Harkins is far from the only one to be misused, but yet he's such a beautiful example: if you're the Jets, and you're basically dead set on never giving the guy a proper 20-game stretch in a scoring line to prove himself there, then why did you use pick #47 in an excellent draft to get a guy who will peak as a fourth liner (for your team, as you'll never even try to get anything else from him)? Petan is another one: I'm pretty certain he wasn't drafted for his grit and tenacity on the fourth line - why was he played there anyway? Hell, if you gave me Chevy's phone, I could come up with 20+ fourth liners to fill that role by the end of the week. For some reason, we are content with expending good assets to do that instead.
Looking back at all our picks since 2011, Copp and Appleton seem to be the only two Jets' draftees to have started as clear 4th liners in their first years, while still becoming impact players for us later on. Appleton's impact is kind of debatable here, but I decided to let it slide here. Roslovic fits the bill, but we lost him right around when he started scoring more in a bigger role elsewhere (shock). As for the defensemen, literally nobody who started as a third pairing guy playing < 15 minutes a night has turned into a regular. The jury is still out on Samberg (not looking that good based on us retaining all the expensive roadblocks), but otherwise, it's very bleak. Could this possibly be about something else than the prospects not being good, I wonder? Oh, and the team has been shit for a good chunk of these 12 years too. Wow.