Neither he nor De la Rose should be in the top 9. That would leave 1 spot for either one of them.
On the one hand I still want to give De la Rose a full season to prove himself; although I don't believe he can have an impact on the game at forward, and 4th line centers are a dime a dozen. On the other, realistically, we're not contenders this year and I'm sick of Bergevin's goal of making the playoffs and calling two seasons ago a good year when we got bounced in the 1st round because we had not team in front of Price. So, I hope we don't make the playoffs and it would be nice if Pleks some how fetched a 2nd at the deadline again. Although, that's not a sure thing with him being 1 year older and because the market could be different.
So that's the tradeoff De la Rose's potential "development" vs. a potential 2nd. Neither are sure things.