What is 'elite'? Or what is a 'gamebreaker'? I would argue those terms have become overused, muddled and practically meaningless when it comes to prospects. If it actually held any meaning, the league would be littered with gamebreaking talent across the entire roster. There at least a 10 pundit labeled "gamebreakers" walking into the league every year.
I know there was The Athletic article from last year that ranked teams draft performance. I believe the Blues finished 8th with the big caveat that we shipped out a lot of high end talent during and immediately post SC. The way in which that was graded, and the timeframe (15 years) used wasn't really all that valuable, but it did reinforce some of what we constantly hear at the national level - STL is really good at drafting productive NHL players.
We don't take as many offensive home run swings as other teams. And there are some, e.g. Dallas, Tampa, and more recently Minnesota that are great at both. That certainly feeds the narrative that we don't have a lot of high end talent, but: Jake Neighbors almost scored 30 goals last year. Thomas will be a 100pt player. Kyrou is a perineal 30 goal scorer. Snuggerud is sleepwalking at the top of the NCAA. Dvorsky is producing (agree with Perry, 'producing' not dominating) in the AHL as much as some "Wheeler/Pronman labeled high end prospects that are 1-2 years older. Stenberg has torched the WJC 2 years in a row, and Stancl nearly led this years WJC in scoring.
My point in all of this: Our scouts are better than ones writing articles and doing rankings to a compounding degree. They have been for a long time. And our prospects seem to consistently outperform their peers and/or pundit expectations. Too much of a prospect rankings are swayed with pre-draft pedigree, accessible geography, and post-draft game style noisiness vs. just simply production and performance.
I think what everyone is really talking about when they say 'elite' (IMO) are "play drivers". The problem is that you can't have a whole team, or even a whole line of play drivers. There just aren't that many of them. Less and less at every level leading into the NHL. Outside of the lottery, you draft for top-6 production and you hope for play-drivers.
Dvorsky has a good shot at being a play driver, but he's also got a very high floor. Much higher than guys like (e.g. Benson, Perreault, Eiserman, Moore, etc.) who are generally ranked higher than him for nebulous reasons. Him having a high floor (i.e. a detailed 2-way game, and smart puck control) seems to somehow obstruct the elite parts of his game. His puck control, passing and shot are and were severely underrated as 'elite' skills. I don't think it's a big leap to think he could be a 35-35 guy with (e.g.) Kyrou on his wing. 70pts, to me, is an elite outcome.
There are so few players that can break a game open on their own, yet it's written by the columnists like it's a common thing that teams like the Blues just don't have. So much of a high end prospects outcome depend on how the players around them optimize the elite talents that they do have. I mean, Snuggy could very well end up being a 'gamebreaker' on Thomas's wing.
One of my main takeaways from the WJC, given Finlands performance against the US and Sweden, was how much Dvorksy with very limited help was able to keep his team in the game as long as he did. Pekarcik had a hand in that, too, but Dvorsky was pressured in ways that (e.g.) Leonard was not due to the talent level of his whole line. And yet, Dvorsky still produced and created more chances. That's no slight on Leonard (who is one of my favorite non-Blues prospects), I just think Dvorsky is right there with him.
I'm not trying to suggest the Blues have 'the best' pipeline, but I am saying it's a good bet that when we look back on this collection of prospects...ours will outproduce and play more games than many of the teams pundits have in front of us.
