I feel like Montreal, or any high pressure market, is not a place to roll the dice on whether they are ready. If we were to dive into looking at the development success stories from Bergevin era, there seems to be a common trend of the players being dominant in previous stage prior to joining Montreal. They also produced almost immediately and kept a consistent role.
1) Gallagher ended junior as one of the few prospects in recent history with 3 straight 40+ goal seasons in WHL before 20. Due to lockout started in AHL and was named an all star. Once the season started started producing right out of the gate and never looked back.
2) Suzuki played his final 2 years in OHL, lit up the playoffs in his final year. Came in as a rookie and after his first 6 games with only 1 point, started to produce (had 12 points in next 20 games to end of November). They kept giving him icetime and PP minutes and they have not really punished him for those cold streaks where he looks like he's not trying.
3) Caufield played in NCAA at age 18/19, dominated in his 2nd year. Signed contract and started producing right away. They kept giving him offensive opportunity and if they leave him with Suzuki/with 1st PP time this season I think they are doing him right. If they start benching him and putting him on 4th line with no PP time, I'd be saying he is better off in AHL working on whatever they feel he is lacking against easier competition.
Tinordi/Juulsen/Fleury/Mete/DLR/McCarron/Romanov/Kotkaniemi are all players who for whatever reason all played in NHL at young age without ever really being that good to begin with yet in their previous stage. They all looked like they can be a NHL regulars. I hope I'm wrong with Romanov but I really don't like the path they are taking with him and feel like they are better off leaving him in KHL to actually be a top 4 D or play him in AHL as top pairing. It's very reminiscent of Mete and it's easy to forget how highly regarded he was as a rookie. I really hope they leave Norlinder off this roster.
I don't think its just the market. I think the Habs in general do a poor job developing skills of players. Bergevin in general likes to talk about it being up to the players when it comes to development, but at some point he's going to have to speak to the fact that he's much more comfortable trading for guys who are the point in their careers where they know what they are than he is developing young guys.
We can point to successes like Gallagher, Suzuki and Caufield, but most of their development probably happened before they were part of the Habs organization. They were instructed and developed in Junior/College and simply allowed to acclimatize when they made the NHL. Same with Lehkonen. Which is fine, since that's the case with lots of players, but you need to see actual development if you don't want to spend lots of cap space on middle of the lineup veterans. I criticize Bergevin for not having true star players on the team, but that's a function of strategy and drafting more than anything else. But the fact that the Habs need to sign guys like Chiarot, Edmundson and Savard year after year is a criticism of player development.
A non-obvious example of good player development is Pittsburgh. One of the reasons they've remained competitive with lots of vets is that they've been able to fill holes in their line-up with mid-round picks or undrafted guys to surround their expensive stars. And to date, the Bergevin-era Habs have been objectively awful at that.
EDIT: These quotes are what I was thinking about with this post:
That's a pretty antiquated way of looking at education or development. Different players need different tools and if you can't recognize that then you probably shouldn't be drafting players, you should be trading picks for more established guys that you know will use your tools best.
