Steve --
Thanks. I planted mine in the spring of 2012. In three winters, including some very rough weather, I've had maybe 10-20% damage. I'm sorry about your damage. Maybe we should compare notes on method.
Re emergence and fruiting, one tentative conclusion from my observations is that it's best to leave the plant protected and dormant as long as necessary to ensure that it doesn't experience any shock from the cold. In past years, I didn't take the protection off until early April with bud break late April/very early May. But as I mentioned on another thread, this year in March I opened the protection to help ventilation. The covers are like a tunnel or Quonset hut; I opened a relatively small ~6" hole in the north end. I think this was a mistake. Pretty much all of my plants showed retarded emergence on the north side, which I attribute to exposure to the cold wind. I have no other explanation. If I'm right, a fairly small difference in microclimate in early spring can make a big difference.
I have a friend who co-manages a nursery father north, probably borderline 6A/5B. She has hundreds of figs in pots. She keeps them in an unheated garage. This year, I noticed that she took them out of storage in late April. I bought a few plants, which I either re-potted or planted in-ground in the second week of May. Comparing similar varieties (eg., my already in-ground MBvs and HC vs. the new in-ground Sal's or potted Takoma Violet), I can't see anything to suggest that the plants brought out of storage in very late April suffered any delay.
So in the future, I plan to leave on the protection a couple weeks longer.
All that said, I think you need to pinch Paradiso and prune excess growth to get ripe a good harvest of main crop figs here. It may also help to remove brebas. The way I prune now, there're very few anyway. It helps that Paradiso seems to be able to ripen figs well into fall. Last year, I was still picking in early November.
FWIW, my wife thinks Paradiso is the best-tasty fig I have.