Yuck bro. The AHL is gonna have only high 20's low 30's amount of games? Yeah, the "playing time" argument just lost all its weight here. Guys who are on year 4 of waiting for their cup of coffee would probably rather play 12 NHL games than 3x that many with the Crunch. But then again I'm not in charge of such things.
If you are on year 4 of development it makes sense to have them on the taxi squad, they would require waivers to be in the AHL anyway. Those 4 year guys are Volkov and Joseph who have played in the NHL so getting 12 NHL games is more than fine for them, more would obviously be better. But guys like Barre-Boulet, Katchouk, Raddysh and Foote would be going into year 3 of development, missed almost half of year 2's development and none require waivers to play in the AHL.
If our lineup is this
Palat - Point - Stamkos
Killorn - Cirelli - Johnson
Goodrow - Gourde - Coleman
Maroon - Stephens - Joseph
Volkov
Then if we get one injury Volkov is playing, two injuries and most likely Smith is next up, three injuries and maybe its Witkowski. So I'm not sure where these kids would even get 12 games next year without a lot of injuries. So while 30 or even 20 isn't ideal its better than just a few games. Since they'll be playing 20+ there rather than 10 in the NHL.