There are multiple ways to get there. Tampa (Stamkos, Hedman, Kucherov, Point, Vasilevskiy, Palat, Killorn, Cirelli… you can kinda throw Gourde in there too since he was undrafted and his first NHL contract was Tampa) was primarily draft-driven. Florida and (especially) Vegas were not. Colorado was a bit of a mix (a lot of key contributors were not Avs draftees, but arguably the 4 best/most important on the championship team were).
I will say a franchise like ours should probably try more closely for the Tampa/Colorado route, but definitely need to be good at both. Our 2019 team had a nice mix of draftees (Atkinson, PLD, Jenner, Savard, Anderson, Werenski, Bjorkstrand) and trades (Panarin, Bob, Foligno, Dubinsky, Jones, Duchene).
The one thing you’ll notice is lack of UFAs: our best in 2019 was probably Riley Nash? It’s more often than not gonna be difficult for us to build that way. Certainly a key move in free agency here or there is important, but the draft followed by wise trades is probably the best path to success for us. And obviously if you can get a guy cheap off waivers/that’s unsigned that turns into a key piece, great, but that’s often very, very hard to predict.