It would have been fine against a NHL player. Like you said the entry was destined to fail but the NHL player would have been fast enough to hit him with the shoulder and not the leg. But Pare has been wobbling between the ECHL and AHL for a while. It looks like he finally was able to establish himself as a depth AHL player last season but he's certainly not among the top half of AHL talent he barely belong in the league. Like you said basically a pylon so Laine should have taken it easy but i guess he wanted to impress his new fans which is understandable. It sucks but it is what it is he was always a gamble.
Not sure i get the team is small thing though. Suzuki is average height for an offensive center. Slaf is big, Dach is big, Demidov size is fine for skilled winger. There's Caufield and Newhook but that's two player. The rest of the prospects are average size or bigger for the most part. The dmen are rather big outside of Hutson. The team lacks grit no doubt about it but that's something that can be addressed on the trade market or via free agency later on and young teams pretty much always lack grit that's usually something you build as you grow older and the frustation builds up.
It's crazy how two weeks ago everyone was on cloud 9 and two pre-season losts and the building is on fire. That's the hab fans i know