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Noone, unless they use a solid statistical analysis (which I am not wasting my time on), will convince me otherwise.
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Ok. If I take a draft, such as the 2005 draft (most players drafted here should have at least played a bit in the NHL). The teams who's first rounders played 0 games:
Buffalo, Washington (0 of 2), Atlanta. Now, I'm going to take those guys drafting from 2005 (excluding the first rounders) to 2010, and ignore any pick 14th overall or higher (the teams who miss the playoffs)
Buffalo: Mike Weber (serviceable Dman), Jhonas Enroth (still a good goalie prospect as far as I've heard), Tyler Ennis (beat Nemisz to the show having been picked right after him).
Washington: Varlamov, Carlson (admittedly not great, but who knows how happy fans are with their scouting)
Atlanta: Not a whole lot there...in fact, their drafting record looks plain ludicrous, and even worse than the Flames
Now teams who's 1st rounders have played, but not much: Detroit, Islanders, Blackhawks, Flames, Lightning.
Detroit: Helm, Abdelkader, Matthias
Islanders: Not terribly much
Chicago: Hjalmarsson, not much more (although they drafted high a few times, and took a few superstars, worth noting here)
Calgary: Backlund, Negrin, Keetley, Sutter (and I didn't include guys like Keetley, Sutter, and even Negrin off the other teams, except maybe Enroth in Buffalo)
Tampa Bay: Nobody really
Now out of these teams:
Detroit, Islanders, Chicago, Calgary, Tampa Bay, Atlanta, Washington, Buffalo...I'd say that Chicago and Washington are where they are due to being in the basement (similarily, most of Atlanta's decent prospects are there for the same reason). Detroit and Buffalo manage to squeeze the best possible players out of that group. The rest of them....Atlanta, Islanders, Tampa...these are organizations that nobody wants to (nor shoudl they want to) emulate. Even including Chicago and Washington, I like our drafting better. I still do not think that it's "good" though. Perhaps average, but not "good". Buffalo, Detroit, Nashville, those teams are great at it. If you want to win consistently, you have to be exactly that.