I really opened a can of worms with the Keith comparison. I just want to illuminate some things about his path to stardom that maybe get overlooked due to where he ultimately ended up. In 2005, on HF, Keith was Chicago's 19th rated prospect and they only ranked 20. He was behind Babchuk, Baker, Seabrook, Wisniewski, and a glut of other guys who didn't have a modicum of the success he had. He wasn't overwhelmingly productive in the NCAA prior to jumping to the CHL, where he posted some really good numbers with Kelowna. Prior to making the jump, there was a lot of talk about limited offensive upside. Great first pass, great skater, not "dynamic." He goes to the AHL his first season and scores 25 points in 78 games with a -11 rating. As a touchstone, Haydn Fleury posted better last season in the AHL and we have all basically accepted his offensive capacities are probably fairly limited. The next season in the AHL is essentially a carbon copy of the first, but his defensive capabilities started inching him up the depth chart that was already pretty crowded. Chicago started to take notice and shift some pieces so that he could crack the roster the next season. The idea being that while his offense at the AHL level never really came through, he could certainly take some difficult minutes with the growth that his defensive game had taken. He wasn't going to get powerplay time, but he'd probably get as much icetime as he could handle and he did. 23 minutes worth per game as a 22 year old rookie, where he managed 21 points and a -11 rating. Respectable for sure as a rookie to get that much TOI, but as anticipated the offense was limited to infrequent contributions and was primarily a result of getting so much TOI that you're bound to score *some* points if you're not entirely inept at moving the puck. So coming into his 23 year old season, Duncan Keith was viewed as a strong up and coming defensive defenseman with limited offensive impact. His shot was said to be a little subpar and it was unlikely he'd ever play significant time on the PP because to that point he had never even shown an indication that kind of upside was in his arsenal. Plus, Chicago had some other guys they liked a bit better offensively. Cam Barker chief among them. Former 3rd overall pick who had been offensively productive at every level. Dustin Byfuglien. Anton Babchuk. Brent Seabrook. All of which had displayed significant tools that would make them more viable PP options.
What happened for Keith in his 23 YO season was a significant spike in assists on a pretty terrible team. 29 assists while playing in all 82 games (23:36) on a team that scored 195 goals. (Jaccob Slavin (16-17) 82 GP - 29 A - 23:26 TOI - 212 team goals - 22 YO) At this point, people started to say.... hmm. Keith's a really smart player but he didn't produce a lot of those points on the PP. With Wisniewski and Barker on the way, he's probably not going to be a primary PP guy moving forward but it's encouraging to see a little development in his offense.
Are we starting to see the explanation for the term "trajectory" as it pertains to this comparison?
Byfuglien arrives the next season and takes a lot of the PP load. Seabrook takes a bunch as well. Wisniewski, Keith, and Barker are battling it out for the remaining TOI in that situation. Nobody is in a huge hurry to give Keith all those minutes because he's already so damn valuable at ES and the PK that it would probably be ideal if one of those other options really embraced the PP role in order to more ideally distribute the load. Keith posts another 32 point season as the other PP options flounder a bit, but posts a ridiculous +30 and finishes 11th place in Norris voting.
So that is where we are as it pertains to Slavin vs. Keith at this point in their development. Any conclusions or similarities you draw are entirely up to you, but to ignore the similarity in the story to me seems inauthentic. Does he take the dramatic jump that Keith took at 26 to ascend to the upper echelon? Who knows. But the stories read so remarkably similar all the way down to league perception.