Feels like contrarians rather insist those people see him as a bust, when most just want to see him develop properly.
Not one regular commentator has said they want him to bust or think he's a bust, and yet a few posts above yours there is someone saying "
He didn‘t get any points though so he’ll get bashed at some point between tonight and Monday despite the good game and us winning."...
Progression isn’t always linear, even established players around the league have bad stretches and consistency draws the line between the truly elite players of the league.
I agree but once a player is established as bonafide NHL quality, you tend to not worry about such things. Also... they can't be sent down, so that door is blocked!
Slaf
can be sent down and there is nothing wrong with sending him to the AHL at this phase in his hockey career. That the Habs won't do it has been re-affirmed multiple times but it doesn't mean we should accept it as the final word. We know the Habs make mistakes all the time, this could be one of them.
As for bad stretches, If Suzuki is on a bad stretch, we should be able to say "he's on a bad stretch, I hope he breaks out soon". If Slafkovsky is on a bad stretch, we should be able to say "this is bad for his development, we have an easy out -- let's send him down for the time being" and it could be right or wrong but it's certainly not
bashing to say so.
We were saying it last year but many thought it was against the rules to criticise the Habs organization's handling and management of Slafkovsky so they complained about us and made us out to be haters who want our own prospects to fail. Now they insist that last year was actually good and we would see the results this year. Like you say in the rest of your post: we expect some more production while we wait to review progress at gp10.
I think I've come to terms with the notion that the Habs will belligerently not send Slafkovsky down no matter what so I won't be repeating my folly of last year. I don't like game-by-game recaps either but the gloating and sneering after game 1 has all but died down... how so very expected.
How about no gloating, sneering, or being snotty after any game, good or bad? We celebrate the good and critically assess the not-so-good.