I disagree with your take. If you look at the Habs recent history with drafting, your partially right in sentiment, the era between 2012-2016 brought the Habs nothing but Mete and Sergachev who was sacrificed to bring in Drouin. But development takes time. From 2017 on, each of the Habs prospects are at most 21 years old (some being 22 if they have a really early birthday). No matter what you think of the big club, the smart path to development isn't putting players under 21 into a non development League and hope for the best. The only prospects from 2017 that look like they could be NHLers are Poehling who needs lots of ice time instead of getting less minutes than KK, Suzuki, and Danault. Brook and Fleury who could be serviceable bottom pairing D if they continue their steady progression. Primeau who shouldn't even think about the NHL permanently for another 2-3 years. And those are the Habs oldest prospects (who look like NHL hopefuls). After that Habs have KK and Romanov who graduated so they aren't prospects anymore. I don't see development as linear. (This is an adjustment year for Romanov and I don't agree with you, Kulak is terrible. Romanov has struggled at times but looked great at others. Kulak is useless. The most he can do is rush the puxk to the o zone turn it over then go on a change). Suzuki needs to pick it up. Ill forgive him as the sofemore slump is a thing. Harris who said he wanted to finish college from the start. Ylonen who looks to be a future middle six forward but needs to get adjusted to the north american game. And if we go further, we are starting to talk about teenagers or at most guys who just turned 20. Everyone knows about Caufield, etc.
My point is there is context behind the decision for most of these guys to not be in the NHL. And remember we aren't talking about an old, matured prospect group, we're talking about 18-21 year olds. Why? Well as previously stated because of bad drafting and development from 2012-16. You can't expect kids to jump into the NHL. Even though other teams bring in prospects early, there's context behind those decisions. Show me a good team that brings in a young prospect that wasn't seen as blue chip coming in. Usually crappy teams bring up grade A or B prospects when they're young because... They're crappy teams. I'm not saying it's perfect but do an honest analysis of the Habs prospects from 2017-2020. They have talent at the wings, they have talent up the middle, they have tons of D that look to be future NHLers, they have an heir apparent to Carey Price. What happened to everyone wanting to follow the old Detroit Red Wings model. Wasn't that successful before they lost all their players to age.
