Doesn’t really matter that other players around noesen have played less. Players taken after Noesen have had good careers.
That's like blaming your wife for winning $5 instead of the jack pot with the lottery ticket. She should've picked a better time to buy a ticket. The draft isn't remotely close to an exact science as these draft reviewers make it to be. Not for the NHL anyways. If it were, the Alfredsson's, Datsyuks, Pavelskis, Byfugliens, and other late round picks wouldn't happen. Or as someone mentioned, the Bergerons getting picked in the second round wouldn't either. Ottawa being 4/11 on hits in the 1st round is probably par for the course relative to the league.
If we consider their position in selection too (Bold are impact players, italics are borderline):
2011 - Zibanejad 6 OA; Rest of the league from 2003-2013 6/11 hits (
Monahan, H.
Lindholm,
OEL, Gagner,
Brassard,
Michalek). Four misses in Connolly, Filatov, Brule, Montoya. Hit rate 54%.
2011 - Noesen 21 OA; Rest of the league from 2003-2013 7/11 hits (
Jankowski, Sheahan, Moore, Riley Nash,
Rask, Wolski, Stuart). Misses in Gauthier, Gustafsson, and Sanguinetti. Hit rate 63%.
2011 - Puempel 24 OA; Rest of the league from 2003-2013 4/11 hits (Hayes,
Backlund,
Oshie,
Richards). Hit rate 36%.
2012 - Ceci 15 OA; Rest of the league from 2003-2013 4/11 hits (Pulock,
Karlsson,
Radulov, Nilsson). Six misses in J. Miller?, Holland, Plante, Helenius, O'Marra. (That's 3 other teams that managed to get a player out of 15OA in the last decade, we did it twice, with one superstar and one regular despite a weak draft year). Hit rate 36%.
2013 - Lazar 17 OA; Rest of the league from 2003-2013 5/11 hits (
Hertl,
Gardiner,
Hanzal, Lewis,
Parise). Misses in Beaulieu, Hishon, Rundblad, Cherepanov (RIP), Swarz. Hit rate 45%.
2014 - No pick
2015 - Chabot 18 OA; Rest of the league from 2003-2013 6/11 hits (
Teravainen,
Watson,
Cole, Stewart,
Chipchura, Fehr). Misses in Mueller, McNeill, Leblanc, Pickard, Parent. Hit rate 54%.
2015 - White 21 OA; Rest of the league from 2003-2013 8/11 hits (
Jankowski, Sheahan, Moore, Riley Nash,
Rask, Wolski, Stuart,
Noesen). Misses in Gauthier, Gustafsson, and Sanguinetti. Hit rate 72%.
2016 - Brown 11 OA; Rest of the league from 2003-2013 6/11 hits (
Forsberg,
Ellis, Brandon Sutter, Bernier,
Kopitar,
Carter). Misses in Morin, Siemens, Campbell, Beach, Tukonen. Hit rate 54%.
2017 - Bowers 11 OA; Rest of the league from 2003-2013 6/11 hits (Skjei, Coyle,
Foligno,
Niskanen,
Fistric,
Perry). Hit rate 54%.
2018 - Tkachuk 4 OA: Rest of the league from 2003-2013 10/11 hits (
Jones,
Larsson,
Johansen,
Kane,
Pietrangelo, Hickey,
Backstrom, Pouliot,
Ladd, Zherdev). Miss was Reinhart 2012.
2019 - Thompson 19 OA: Rest of the league from 2003-2013 8/11 hits (
Vasilevski,
Klefbom,
Bjugstad,
Kreider, Sbisa,
Kindl, Korpikoski,
Getzlaf) . Hit rate 72%.
Using definition of a hit being a player who dresses for more than 200 games. With the exception of 2019 when we picked 19 OA and league trend over the last decade is strangely high at 91%, most of Ottawa's pick spots over the last decade have trended around 54%. Excluding Brown, Thopmson, Bowers since they're too young to hit that 200 mark (e.g. Chabot being a year older than Brown and still only just hitting 200 games now, or only a handful of picks in Brown's year only hitting 200 games with most being top 10 picks), Ottawa's hit on just about every pick, except Puempel and White, every Ottawa pick has been a hit. If you expand to 300 games, the odds lean to Ottawa's favour with their picks being regulars, and the likes of Kindl, Fistric, Jankowski, Watson, Chipchura are removed from the hit list. Then if we talk only about impact players (bolded), the hit rates become around 20-30% at our pick spots, exceptions obvious at 4 OA and 6 OA (surprise!). Exception again being 19 OA which is an anomaly in that despite being a late pick, has produced an NHL player 72% of the time, with 45% of them being impact players (top 4D, top 6F, #1 goalie).
For comparisons, Ottawa's only impact player besides in the top 10 is Chabot at 18th OA, where only 2/11 of the last picks were impact players at that spot, Teureveinen and Cole.
So to some up, at our picks, we've hit (200+ games) way more than other teams do. But impact players, unless Brown, Bowers, Thompson become top 6F, 4D, we hit at 1 player/9 'drafts outside of top 6' rate, while other teams tend to hit at a 25-36% rate.
My personal conclusion: Ottawa takes safe picks instead of BPA/boom or busts. Brown is the only real disappointment (assuming he never pans out) seeing as 54% of 11 OA pan out and 4 of the last 11 have been stars. Brown's year was supposedly stacked too so hope we didn't pull a Hugh Jessiman? White is no where near a disappointment, 21OA never seemingly amount to impact players. Finally, what the hell is up with 19 OA.