You can't buy cups with the cap, even pre-cap it was incredibly difficult for teams to accumulate enough high priced talent because free-agency was essentially just over the hill players. You could hold onto your stars once you developed them, like Detroit/Colorado/Dallas/Philly did, but they had to be drafted first. It's why we got screwed once the cap forced us to jettison key players off our team when our predecesors didn't have to.
The only team I can think pre-04 to try and buy a cup were the Rags, because they basically ran a monopoly on being a place where players wanted to play and could deal for those players.
I do agree with your point though, drafting has lost a lot of it's value now, you can fill any hole your team has if you have enough cap space. Don't expect sutatinability however, Florida is basically riding a perfect storm and will shed a massive chunk of this talent this offseason.
Pre-04 lockout Philadelphia was one of the big money teams.
Lindros was traded for (from Quebec), John LeClair was with Montreal, Mark Recchi was from Pittsburgh, Brind'Amour was from St. Louis, etc.
They did draft Ron Hextall, but he was also a 6th round pick.
edit: the Flyers had a rather circular way to build their late 90s roster. Rick Tocchet (another Flyers 6th round pick) was traded for Mark Recchi. Recchi was later traded to Montreal for John LeClair. A few years after that, the Flyers traded Dainus Zubrus, and a 2nd round pick (Matt Carkner) to get Recchi back. So they had both.
Ron Hextall was traded in the deal for Eric Lindros. Two years later, the Flyers traded to reacquire him from the Islanders.
Mikael Renberg...traded to TB, traded back to Philly, traded to Phoenix for Rick Tocchet.
