People throw around the term "elite" talent, but what does that mean?
High draft picks? A lot fail or just turn out to be good, but not great.
The top scoring forwards last 3 years:
McDavid (#1), McKinnon (#1), Kucherov (#58), Draisaitl (#3), Rantanen (#10), Pastrnak (#25), Panarin, Marner (#4), Tkachuk (#6), Crosby (#1), Nylander (#8), Point (#79), Kaprizov (#135), Pettersson (#5), Robertson (#39), Matthews (#1)
Top D-men:
Q Hughes (#7), Makar (#4), Fox (#66), Josi (#38), Hedman (#2), Bouchard (#10)
Top goalies:
Hellebuyck (#130), Vasilevskiy (#19), Shesterkin (#118), Saros (#99), Sorokin (#78)
Edmonton and Toronto have the most "stars", Edmonton got the SC finals once, Toronto has yet to get past the 2nd rd. It's not the NBA, it's a team game where quality depth can compensate for lack of star power.
Once you get past the top scorers or so, the curve flattens out, sizeable dropoff after #7 (Panarin), the falloff from say Matthews to Bratt is 12 (non empty net) points over 2 1/2 years. So if you can't get one of the truly elite scorers, simply have one more solid starter will bridge the gap between a top scorer and a very good scorer.
So yeah, it helps to pick at the top of the draft, but more importantly, it helps to have a lot of picks in the top 40, or at least the top 100, and to draft well. If you can't draft and develop players, picking at the top won't help anyway unless you get #1 with a can't miss franchise player on the board - and that happens less than half the time.
2024: Celebrini, 2023: Bedard, 2022: Slafovsky, 2021: Power, 2020: LaFreniere, 2019: Hughes, 2018: Dahlin, 2017: Hischier, 2016: Matthews, 2015: McDavid, 2014: Ekblad, 2013: MacKinnon, 2012: Yakupov, 2011: RNH, 2010: Hall.
Not sold on Bedard as a "franchise" player, Hughes is a great scorer but a great player?
Point is there are a lot of players taken #11-20 who are as good as most of these players.
Even having #1 doesn't guarantee you a cornerstone player.