[en] A novel state of matter has been hypothesized to exist during the early stage of relativistic heavy-ion collisions, with normal hadrons not appearing until several fm c^-1 after the start of the reaction. Radial flow of multi-strange baryons is shown to be a sensitive probe of the expansion of the deconfined phase prior to hadronization. Using a hybrid macroscopic/microscopic transport model we show that if at hadronization the system has been significantly out of chemical equilibrium, hadronic rescattering cannot drive the system towards full chemical equilibration. Furthermore, we suggest a novel model-independent observable, balance functions, to evaluate correlations between charges and their associated anticharges It is shown that balance functions are extremely sensitive to the time-scale of hadronization: late-stage hadronization is characterized by tightly correlated charge/anticharge pairs when measured as a function of relative rapidity. (author)