Is that your argument though? The real question is whether he makes the team on merit. He is competing with Del Zotto, Hutton, and Pouliot on the left side with any changes? There is a spot for him if you want him on the team and outside of spectacular performance you can easily send him down to the AHL. On a rebuilding team, if he's anything close to one of those three guys and you think his development would be fine in the NHL then you keep him.
It will be interesting to see the balance of Linden/Benning wanting to have all these hot shot kids on the pro team for marketing purposes vs the kids actually being good enough to supplant the glut of vets currently under contract vs if they don't make it getting them to report to Utica instead of back to Europe if they don't make it.
Considering the current team makeup the proper way to do things going forward would be to have Pettersson, Gaudette, Dahlin, Lind, Gadjovich, Juolevi, etc, join Demko and all report to Utica (unless someone proves exceptional), let the Canucks tank then sell like crazy at the deadline and bring up the best of the bunch to finish the NHL season. This would actually be what Toronto did the other season, which was nothing like we actually accomplished this year, but consider me highly sceptical that Benning could actually pull it off.