I mean, if I was pulling my goalie right now and I had to choose between Stutzle and Byfield, it wouldnt be a super easy choice right now today.
When we talk about the risk of Byfield while debating him against Stutzle... Well, what about Stutzle's risk? He is as flawed of a player as Byfield in vastly different ways. I love to point out Barzal as a player who overcome the flaws in Stutzle's game but I can think of other comparables (Drouin) who kept those same flaws.
I think Byfield's rawness and flaws are two different discussions. Every top prospect has flaws, most have rawness.
I re-read this post and thought that your clarifying of terminology used such as flaws vs. rawness is very good. A lot of people are arguing the 50th time all over both here and/or today, plus other places and other drafts simply because the wrong terminology or incorrect understanding of the vocabulary is occurring between one more more parties is occurring. Mix the fact that scouting for most people is a lot of projection mixed with speculation and we have a good ole mess.
Since this is the Byfield thread, lets discuss his ranking. I'm one of the guys who earlier around July/August had concluded that Byfield was not top 4. (4/5ths have him top 3, 1/5 to 1/10th of scouts, both armchair and pro, seemed to have him at around 5th/6th.
In my mind, and I think similar to Draft Dynasty guy, we agree with all of the projections. We agree both him and a guy like Stutzle are flawed as prospects and have parts of their game that need some significant work. I also think that Stutzle is NHL-ready or one year away while Byfield is at least two years away since he needs one more "dominant" year in juniors before he goes pro (like AHL). I think both Byfield "top 3 supporters" and Byfield 5-6 guys agree on this. I know the Kings fans I have read, almost all say "we have the time to develop him" meaning they realistically expect him to take a few years. So I think everyone agrees on his raw-ness. And as I mentioned above, everyone agrees neither player is Lafreniere, a near-flawless prospect. One of Stutzle's main flaws is his shot is no where near a level of tool the rest of his offensive tools are; to me this means as is, he may wind up being a one or two trick pony in the NHL if he doesn't develop further...and that's not his only part of his game he needs to work on.
So far, flaws and rawness, I think most everyone here agrees on both. Everyone knows Byfield is rawer than players like Stutzle and Rossi. But everyone knows Byfield's upside over a guy like Rossi is equally greater than his rawness. And we all agree, other than Laf, all the prospects are flawed in at least one or more significant ways. Due to flaws and rawness across the board as negatives, negatives that can wash a bit across the board, we can use upside as a significant positive to cancel a certain amount of negatives. Byfield has bigger upside, including factoring his relative youth, he as a prospect can have that cancel some of his bigger rawness negative. (You and many others here probably know all of this already, intuitively...I just state it so you know I know.)
Despite this, due to his upside projection, it still puts Byfield in the top 3. I had Byfield 1-2 most of the year. But as time went on, we (us dissenting scout guys) allowed other players to leapfrog him because they had highly successful outcomes and their records were very complete. A "full record" means having appropriate success on the following levels of the D year:
1) Regular season (with positive adjustment if playing against men, vs. boys) (60-80% weight)
2) Tournament success vs. other top players, including national tournaments and team tournaments like Calder Cup (20-40% weight)
(BTW, I feel that many pundits in the NHL give a large amount of overall consideration to record...it's the reason why some players are in the top 100 NHL of all time and some are not, despite obvious top 100 talented players left off discrepancies. And I'm one of the guys...meaningful stats are more meaningful in meaningful games. )
Typical weight of the regular season, I give as 80% normally. Success over a full season to me against competition of your peers, day in and day out, is the most important. (This is where DD and I fully agree...quitters get dinged hard...in this case, there is no concern with Byfield.)
Tournament weight I give 20% to 40%. I increase from the normal 20 to 40% not because of a particularly spectacular performance (that could just be matchup issues). I give a higher percent if a player got injured during the regular season but still played in tournaments. Byfield certainly qualifies in this case as a approximate 35% since his regular season was only 45 of 63? games in his CHL season. So because he was out for about a quarter of the regular season, we allow greater weight for his tournament play.
Unfortunately, his tournament play was not that good. So he got an A for his ridiculously good regular season numbers but only at 65% weight because he is missing a quarter of the season, his total record grade for me is something like B-. He made the tournaments as a "best of the best players" but didn't do all that much, for whatever reason/s. 35% C. (I give below C for those that don't even get picked or didn't even make the tournaments.)
A guy like Rossi, I believe I give him a record of A, the highest normal grade. He lead the CHL in scoring, he had decent tournament numbers...he played against boys.
A guy like Stutzle, I gave him an A+, a grade normally not possible. He is his national team's number one player, head and shoulders. His regular season he played against men Mannheim DEL and set records for a rookie. It's not a surprise that a guy who started the season at the bottom of the first round and shot up to #2 OA gets a grade higher than normally possible.
So this B- is where guys who get A and A+ (including others like maybe Sanderson) can leapfrog Byfield. Personally, I have Rossi and Byfield nearly tied...where Byfield as an absurd A+ upside, I think Rossi has like a C+ upside due to his being older and almost completely physically mature. I bet Byfield can put on more muscle, be taught (especially by a team like LA) to play an even heavier, dominant game, be taught defense, etc. I don't think he'll be Kopitar, but he could be a more monstrous Toews (it's this A+ thing that leads to a lot of Kings fans here to have BDS, Byfield Derangement Syndrome).
TLDR;
Bottom line, prospects who achieve get the credit, those who did not achieve whether due to lack of opportunity or unfair situation...doesn't matter, that's the way the hockey cookie crumbles...things like injuries and bad coaching/bad luck are part of the game.
Byfield's big ding is his partial regular season and lack of tournament success compounded and in this year where you have prospects who had ridiculous, full regular seasons and significant tournament success, these few that leapfrogged Byfield have significantly less perceived risk than Byfield. Byfield still has that A+ drool-worthy ceiling but others do as well and they have the low risk/full resume to boot that he doesn't have. Stutzle for example has A for ceiling and A+ for record vs. Byfield's A+ ceiling and B- for record. (For the record I think both are about B+ for flaws. Lafreniere has an A or A+ across the board...he will be 1OA.)
However, that being said, I would bet my money that next year, if Byfield can play the full season, he might make himself the best prospect since McDavid, over MacKinnon and Matthews (I feel Laf is about a Matthews but as a winger). Sometimes your BDS is justified by a A+ ceiling. I also feel Stutzle is the best fit for the Kings and could be a Patrick Kane-level of player, but as a playmaker...MVP-level of player in the regular season AND in the NHL playoffs. Very sick choice at 2OA.