Just to show the difference in depth....around 2017 and pre-18 draft we had:
Patrick #2 overall pick
Frost a top CHL scorer
Lindblom top SHL player at age 20
Sanheim put up top WHL scoring totals not seen in a decade
Allison top 5 in NCAA scoring
Laczynski PPG as freshman in NCAA
Myers going from undrafted to WJC top pairing pairing Dman
Hart top CHL goalie
Sandstrom WJC top goalie
Vorobyev a top scorer in WJC
Morin top 10 pick
Rubstov 1st rd pick
Friedman a top dman in his NCAA conference
Ratcliffe a 50 goal guy in OHL
Marody well over PPG in NCAA
Kase a WJC regular
Susko a WJC player
Tomek a WJC goalie
Hogberg a WJC player
Bernhardt looking good in SHL
Bunnaman...only for Cap
Twarynski was a 45 goal OHL guy
Strome was a PPG OHL guy
Kalynuk had a great freshman year in NCAA
While we also had recent grads:
Provy top CHL dman
Konecny
Ghost
Hagg
And we still had guys like NAK, Cates, Lycksell, Fazleev, Fedotov, Ustimenko, in the system who had showed something at some point or were about to in tbe future.
Like we still need a full 2 more drafts of like 10 guys, where 8 of them have good post draft years to build the kind of depth we had before.....and it still wasn't enough due to development, usage, luck.