i love the dude, and any day would be a good day to announce a new deal with him.
you nailed it about his growth. it is a cliche in a lot of sports that guys getting to the top level need to 'get used to the speed of the game' or have the 'game slow down.' having said that, he is one of the starkest examples i can remember. it has been incredible to see him progress from the initial holy shit/hot potato reactions early, to the make a quick (but usually good) pass to get the puck out middle stage, to finally completely thinking at game speed and being able to make the pass or skate it out and take advantage of his speed.
i can't remember a d-man on the canes where we got to see that so clearly. pesce and slavin were better when they showed up. hanafin never really developed (until he got to calgary, anyway) at least in my opinion - the guy that left was basically the exact guy we drafted. fluery hitting his peak in the bubble was good, but he couldn't keep it up. bean - no. maybe we would have seen it with forsling, but he hadn't shown enough to pass anyone above him on the chart so had to go somewhere that would give him playing time. faulk might be the previous best example, but he was more thrown in the deep end than allowed a natural progression.
this wasn't supposed to be this long.
tl;dr - watching chatty grow = enjoyable
