Because it's a business and the organization is/was haemorrhaging money. In Forbes' most recent analysis, they had the Canes losing 3.9million for that season (before interest, taxes, and amortization).
The Business Of Hockey
Lots of teams just buy tape and have subscriptions to every streaming and archive service and scout off of that for areas they don't have regular or fulltime scouts. It's not as good as having the real thing but it's a cost effective solution. Especially when you can get multiple people working on it. It's also why you see so many scouts at big tournaments like the u18 in April. For many organizations it's their first real time look at some of these kids.
I think it's a smart business decision if you don't regularly draft from the locale. Is it the best? No. But even as a big proponent of Russian hockey, I don't necessarily think it's a bad strategy if you are limited. It's a product of the world we live in. Look how big remote working has become in a normal office environment. Technology is certainly helping with some of these expenditures.