The rushed excuse is always weak.
If a player is not "rushed" and just never gets called or stays up, people just say "well he sucked", but if a player was "rushed" people say "oh he was rushed, that's why he stinks", no maybe he just stinks regardless of specific development choices.
That's not how this works, that's not how any of this works. D pairs are routinely just run at even strength and often balanced out. Calling a #5 Defenseman a "top pair" DMan is misleading at best, and an outright lie at worst.