You literally said the only thing holding him back was his skating, and that he'd made significant strides. If he had only one single issue that you're saying was the only thing potentially holding him back, a pretty fair interpretation of that comment would be you think he has no holes and were either entirely ignoring his play in his own zone or suggesting that it wasn't an issue or much of one ... which seems to be the direction you're now going.
Rich Peverley on the other hand, who is paid to watch these guys by the team seems to have a slightly different opinion which is why I pointed it out.
His skating was the only thing holding him back from making the NHL, It has improved tremendously from being a hindrance to being acceptable .
Dellandrea is Faksa 2.0. Probably with the same Offensive upside even. He'll make a great 3c at some point. he might even make a passable 4c this year, I doubt it, but we'll see.
Robertson is our most NHL ready prospect. he doesn't have "holes" to fix in his game.
If defensive prowess was going to be the reason to keep him out of the NHL, Benn would be benched too, Spezza would have never played a game in his career (at least for the Stars)
If Robertson spends the year in the AHL for players like
Gurianov, Cogliano, Dowling or L'Esperance to play in the NHL it is an indictment of how lousy people evaluating the talent for this team are at their jobs.
I'd say it's likely that even at this point Robertson is ahead of Dickinson and Janmark too, at least in terms of Talent.
Of that group of "wingers" outside of Janmark and Dickinson, nobody is all that special defensively and none of them have his offensive upside.
Also to the Peverley point, Yes because that means anything.
It's not like theirs a team of Scouts (that are paid to watch these guys too) that though Gurianov was better than Barzal and Connor, despite almost everyone else in the world knowing that to be not the case. Or thought Honka was Better than Larkin
What was it McDonnel said "top 5 talent in the draft. NO question" about Gurianov? Which you know nobody else in the world had that dumb of an opinion except maybe his own parents.
We should definitely go off of their paid opinions because you know, these people are like never wrong.
Edit- yep here it is