You guys are saying that Babcock doesn't give new players a chance and has an obsession with size. Doesn't explain DeKeyser (skinny) and Brunner (small) who were both rookies when playing for Babcock. Also Babcock loves Helm, who isn't big at all.
The defense is easy to explain. Dekeyser is 6'3 200 pounds. You can call him skinny, and he can surely pack on a few more pounds, but he's not small. Tatar is 5'9 and 176. The difference is obvious, and to say otherwise is willful blindness. Moreover, our defense has been decimated in the past 3 years. We lost a ton of talent with no one to replace them. Of course it's easier for someone to be inserted into a lineup when in the span of a few years, guys like Lidstrom, Stuart, Rafalski, all left and no one was signed to replace them.
As for Brunner, he was hardly a rookie. He was 26 years old who had been playing professional hockey for years in Europe and was signed as a right handed shooter which is another attribute that Babcock is obsessed with. And again, is 5'11 and 184. Not "big" certainly, but obviously bigger than Tatar.
Darren Helm is also 5'11, 192. And he's plays the exact type of hockey that Babcock loves. The mucking, grinding, dump and chase style of hockey.
It goes like this. Are you a grinder? He already likes you. He loves Glendening already. If you're a biggish/big grinder, he loves you the most. Are you a skill guy? You will have to earn every inch you get from him unless you're an all-star like Datsyuk or Zetterberg. Are you a small skill guy? You're going to have to score a hattrick every game or risk the bench.
Even your argument here is assumption based, as there really isn't any fact behind it whatsoever. It's driven by past experiences and past situations involving Babcock's decision making.
Okay, I suppose I'll spell it out for you. There are two kinds of "assumptions." There's the kind that people make that has *no basis for it whatsoever.* And there's the kind I make, that is informed by past experience and Babcock's history and what he says and does.
Now the first is crap. You can make baseless assumptions about anything. "Oh the reason Tatar is not playing is because he doesn't want to. He's going to go into the fashion industry instead. He's just riding out this last year." "He's not playing because he got injured in a car accident." You can literally just make **** up. That's clearly worthless to do.
The latter is more grounded. "Based on what Babcock has said, and what he has done in the past and this season, I think the reason Tatar is not playing is because he is too small for Babcock. I believe this because of the way he uses and talks about certain players on the team."
I think if you want to conflate an assumption based on nothing with an "assumption" based on past experience and evidence, well, I don't know what else to say I guess.