Don't take this the wrong way, but going from this, and your post in the Enstrom/Buff thread, I get the feeling you tend to make more out of a handful of mistakes then one should or is necessary. Mistakes from our top 4 will happen no matter what. They'll be facing the toughest competition all year long and you won't be completely shutting down teams' top lines every night.
The two things I felt like Trouba has done real well this year was to limit his mistakes, and at times be a gamebreaker while not hurting the team. He would have obviously hit a wall at some point, but I don't think it would have been as bad as you might think. He seems to have enough smarts between his ears to limit how much of a down period he would eventually have. He reads plays well.
To be entirely honest, I have PTSD from Jets 1.0 when the year after Selanne scored 76 goals they traded Housley for Quintal and Nelson Emerson.... then they decided to go with Ulanov, Mironov and Sergei Bautin as part of the top 4. Teppo Numminen should have asked for a trade.
Anyone else remember that? It was horrific.
Hell I would be happy if they played the neutral zone trap all year to get the goals against down.
PTSD aside, there is a logical argument for sheltering 19 year old defensemen. A pretty strong one actually. Bogosian should have been sheltered, Pietrangelo was brought along slowly and I think the results in both cases speak for themselves.
We are just really lucky Bogo is in a new situation with Charlie Huddy and he can get things back on track.