The 5 years before that we drafted Rielly, Finn, Percy, Blacker, and Schenn in the first two roundsYou forgot Liljegren and Sandin. It's actually 6 of 19 picks from the first two rounds being defensemen, which isn't abnormal.
I think what's more telling is that before Danford last year we have to go back to Sandin and Durzi in 2018 to find a top pick being used on D.
That's a long stretch, and all the other D prospects pretty much aged out by then.
I personally don't really think Danford was the player to necessarily break that selection-drought, but we could really use a successful top D pick