Not so sure about that. Guys who break into the league at 18 have huge amounts of pressure on them at a young age.
- Patrick Kane is 24 and has had two consecutive years of downward production
- Sam Gagner's highest production was his rookie season
- Zach Bogosian has had an uneven start to his career
- Luke Schenn had enormous amounts of pressure on him in Toronto for a 22 year old
- Nikita Filatov has 6 career NHL goals and 4 of them were scored in his first 8 games. Now out of the league
- Cam Fowler had a 40 point rookie season then 29 the year after
- Josh Bailey hasn't developed much past his first year
- Jeff Skinner saw his production drop in his second year
Outside of the top two or three picks, the long term outlook for 18 year olds kept in the league recently hasn't been real strong. They do well at first but then stop developing.
Skinner had a concussion
Fowler was playing on the Ducks, entire team down year.
Filatov is of a different nature, he felt self entitled, never made his mind up,whined and didnt have the type of composure to last in NA. had like 3 good games in the NHL in total, terrible example to use against it. Awful development by CBJ
Kane is a bad example,players like him have up and down years, last year chicago experimented him as a C. He will be fine
Luke Schenn was never drafted to be an offensive player, alot of his blunders are mental mistakes and his only job was to play defence. **** goaltending didnt help either
Some players are just bad picks and dont pan out - Gagner(still a decent player though),Bailey(awful), and yes Schenn(hes only "bad" because people expected more from him) but i guess that didnt matter since filatov busted.to help your argument, you forgot Turris, who is an example of bad management.
TL;DR - 5 games won't hurt the kid at all, the only thing bad that could come from it is he could ACTUALLY get physically hurt. I guess we should play it safe for his development and just not let him play hockey at all.
Lets just forget all the 18 year olds who entered the league and were successful, hell you listed half of them. Patrick Kane sure isn't less of a threat or player after 2 down years.