I guess it wouldn't hurt to give the connecting pins a shot I mean I could always put on a master link on later if it was annoying as hell. Honestly I've noticed on all the chains I've used with master links both SRAM and KMC (I forgot the first chain I had was a connecting pin) the stretching was located largely around the master link. In other words the whole chain would have no stretch yet when you measured a foot of the chain from pin to pin with the master link in that foot you'd find stretch.