WILMINGTON (CBS) — David Warsofsky is almost living the dream.

The native of Marshfield starred at Boston University for three years, had his rights traded from the St. Louis Blues to his hometown Boston Bruins, and after three years of American Hockey League grooming he might be ready to make the jump to the NHL on a full-time basis.

There’s almost nothing Warsofsky would change about his story, except maybe the notoriety that comes with being a prospect on the cusp of achieving the ultimate goal of any player while trying to be patient and respect the process of development.

“Yeah, I think I get a lot of from people that don’t know hockey saying ‘when are you going to play for the Bruins?’ and stuff like that,” Warsofsky said after practice at Ristuccia Arena on Monday. “So sometimes that gets a little frustrating but the management here knows what they’re doing, I think. And if you look at the Bruins’ roster, almost everyone’s probably played in Providence or the American League at some point. So it’s about waiting for your opportunity.”

Through the basic management tools that every team uses and have been in place since the start of professional sports, and amplified through the creation of development camps over the summers, the Bruins are clear and concise about each player’s plan for reaching their potential. Hopefully in the end that strategy lands the player in the NHL and he enjoys whatever success his potential will allow.

The NHL is not a plug-and-play business. The highest draft picks might go straight to the NHL, but even at the sport’s highest level they might still need some more grooming. Every once in a while a Patrice Bergeron comes along and can make the jump from juniors to the NHL as a second-round pick in his draft year.

More often than not, though, prospects are drafted and groomed for years. They can remain prospects for a while. The hype surrounding them grows proportionally with the success they have at the lower levels of the sport until sometimes there’s a belief that the player belongs in the NHL and shouldn’t be groomed anymore.

“There’s them, there’s their agents, there’s their parents,” Bruins coach Claude Julien said. “Put all three of those together it makes for a really tough situation for those guys to trust us, in a way, or have the patience to stay there because everybody sees them in the NHL right away.”

Typically the player is the first one whose eyes are opened to how long a road it can be from draft day, to prospect status, to NHL player.

“Yeah, I think right when you sign out of college, for me, you want to play in the NHL. But it doesn’t work out like that for a lot of guys,” Warsofsky said. “So the first year is a little bit of an adjustment when you’re not used to playing in there. And then after that you get your feet wet and you kind of settle in a bit. You kind of know your role and where you stand in the organization a little bit better. So after that first year, I think you know a little bit more and you settle in and kind of know when your time’s going to be and wait for it.”

Once the player is immersed in the process, that’s when the outside noise becomes tough to block out. Fans aren’t the only ones hoping for big things from their teams’ prospects. Agents want them to cash in as soon as possible. Family members, blinded often by their love of the player, think they shouldn’t have to endure the process. In Warsofsky’s case, his three older brothers all played hockey. They’re dying to have one of them become an NHL regular. Warsofsky said he’s told them “when you see it on TV, you’ll know it. You don’t have to ask me all the questions.” Warsofsky said his parents are good about staying out of the way.

Other players might not be as lucky. Parents can meddle and overstep their bounds. Friends can be the worst culprits in this realm. A prospect has a great year in the AHL and goes home for summer. All he hears about is how he’s going to take the NHL by storm in the fall. But there’s more to playing than raw skill and production. There are other aspects of the game that have to be mastered — there’s weight and strength that has to be put on, there’s experience needed to make sure split-second decisions are correctly made like second nature. Friends that think they’re as smart as the scouts see an NHL player have a bad game and can’t believe their buddy isn’t taking that player’s place.

Warsofsky turned 24 in May. Center Ryan Spooner is 22. There’s plenty of time for these players to be difference-makers in the NHL.

“At the end of the day, I think for me, I think it’s been good to kind of play down, kind of learn what I need to improve on and kind of learn like just I guess the overall game,” said Spooner, who has two full years of AHL experience and 27 NHL games on his resume. “So I think it’s been good for me. But yeah, you definitely have your friends, your family saying ‘you should be playing up there.’ And I tell them ‘yeah, I could play up there.’ But at the end of the day they’re doing this for a certain reason, but I just sort of go with it and stay positive.”

It’s best for the organization if they arrive in the NHL as close to finished products as possible. Some franchises have low expectations and let kids use the NHL as a laboratory. The Bruins have Stanley Cup aspirations, so there’s little time to live with mistakes and incomplete products unless injuries force a player to be rushed. Warsofsky still had rough edges in his game to smooth out last season. He got thrown into six NHL games and held his own. The confidence from those games helped make him a better player in the NHL and now at training camp he looks like a different man. There’s a chance he won’t see the AHL again.

Patience will pay off for these players. And then the next prospects on the road up will take their place.

Matt Kalman covers the Bruins for CBSBoston.com and also contributes to NHL.com and several other media outlets. Follow him on Twitter @TheBruinsBlog.

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