It's amazing how much discussion and attention a fringe bottom 2 AHL defenseman whose absolute ceiling is second pairing in AHL gets. If he didn't win this award he wouldn't even be discussed.
As I've said previously, threads like this get quite bloated by comments like "I can't believe how many pages this thread has" which then get bloated by replies to those comments.
As others have pointed out, it's August and there's not exactly much news to talk about. It is a hockey prospect message board after all and you act surprised that people might have interest in a hockey prospect?
Even if he didn't win the Hobey Baker, there would have been teams kicking the tires. The extra attention is just a factor of graduating seniors having to wait until August 15th to become free agents. Other guys like Neal Pionk could quietly turn pro and take a month to make their decision in May. They don't get scrutinized since most people have been happily watching the Stanley Cup playoffs.
For the most part, I don't think too many people have gone off the rails in predicting guaranteed future success for Butcher.