All leagues and all jobs are developmental, in fact if you have a philosophy that they aren't, then your philosophy is wrong.
When they say the NHL isn't a developmental league, what they mean is that they have no idea how to develop players at all and want them to be all plug and play. Which also means if a player can plug and play, they don't do anything to make them better than they currently are and as we've seen - they put the entire onus on the player.
This has also seeped into their cognitive bias that inherently a veteran player is better than a rookie player. If the veteran is consistent in his sucktitude, they play him. (see: Merrill, Jon) despite if the younger player, at his worst, is still better, because they frame the good games the rookies play as what level they should always play at and when they dip below it, they 'struggle' and can't be trusted.
The Canadiens would rather trust consistently bad veteran players than trust young players who are unequivocally better, simply because there's more peaks and valleys in their play.
