No, if we are talking about 50 games and 12 points, there is no context needed. I don't care if the Flyers forced him to play a Mylec street hockey stick and didn't let him wear skates. If he scored 12 points doing that and then scored 12 points with Washington, that's the player he is. That isn't development or usage, that is a bad hockey player. He performed better on a SC winning team. He didn't on any other team he played for and was waived twice during that time period (we'll see where it goes this year). This isn't rocket science.
Ahh the classic, "If it doesn't fit my narrative, then the only explanation is that it happened by accident!" We have depth players. You don't like them, but we have them and have developed them and are developing them. Cates is a good example though everyone hates him because he got more money than Morgan Frost. Lindblom was looking good before cancer. Attard and Andrae appear to be on that track. Shit even Allison who you are complaining about looks like he is also trending towards being a good depth player. I'm sure doing a deeper dive would show a lot more. Now, we don't have the late round stars that I would like and can't remember the last time we did, but all this can be traced to a starting point of drafting before you even get to the idea of development.
The problem is that you (and others) have historically greatly inflated the value of our prospects so when they don't live up to it you can't understand why because there is no chance that you were wrong about any of these guys. I was laughed at by a majority of the board when I asked about whether or not Sam Morin was still a top prospect, I was laughed at when I told people to pump the breaks on Philippe Myers, or when people cried about f***ing Joacim Erikksson not being re-signed, or and a bunch of other crappy prospects that people were excited over when it was pretty evident that they weren't going to materialize. Draft better, then improve the development.
