You say your not talking about going off the board, but you mention Aho, Pesce and Slavin. All of those would be examples of off the board picks for other teams to make early. None of them had any noise pre draft to go higher than where they did, they were all picked in their projected range and exceeded expectations. To say Slavin would have gone much higher in hindsight is obvious, but it's the exact situation I said I'm not talking about. Nobody saw him coming, nobody would have drafted him anywhere near round 1 that day.
You continue to miss the point completely. I am not talking about drafting Aho or Slavin with the 5th overall pick, I'm saying 1) you are looking at hindsight, and in hindsight, when the Canes got to the 2nd or 3rd or 4th round, those guys would no longer be there, yet you conveniently add them to your "in hindsight" roster. And 2) If the Canes were to draft Monahan and Nylander, then you have no idea if they would have even been in position to draft Hanifin or Bean. You want your cake and you want to eat it too. That's the problem with any of these "hindsight" rosters.
Contrast that to the situation i am talking about, let's say 2014 for example. Nobody would have batted an eye if the Canes picked Nylander. He was projected to go right in the range of the Canes pick by pretty much every single scouting agency there was. It's fair to say that if another team would have had that pick, they might have picked Nylander or Ehlers there, so it's fair to criticise the Canes for missing those 2.
I'm fine with you criticizing the pick, in fact, I even said that looks like a miss. I have zero disagreement with criticizing that pick. If you want to criticize the Lindholm pick, that's fine too, although I think there if Lindy keeps developing like he has, there will be less cause for that criticism so time will tell. What I disagreed with was you conveniently using hindsight to create an optimal roster while ignoring hindsight when it doesn't fit your narrative. Although I completely disagree with you already claiming a verdict on Hanifin and Bean. In the end, they may end up being worse than players selected after them, but, particularly with a defenseman, that jury is a ways out yet IMO.
Every first round pick the Canes have had, there's been 3-5 guys that are "expected" to be drafted in that range. Even 2015, there were people that had Provorov and Werenski higher than Hanifin. Drafting one of them would have been unexpected, but not crazy..
Now that's some major hindsight. People on this board would have been non-linear if the Canes passed on Hanifin. While it wouldn't have been "crazy", there would have been a meltdown. I specifically remember after Marner was selected by Toronto, posters on this board say things like "now don't screw it up Ronnie, go up and take Hanifin". And while there may have been a 1 or 2 with those guys above Hanifin, it was a minority by far and pretty much only Button, who frequently is different. Just for reference though, here are the final rankings of the major outlets/scouting services. Every single one except Button had Hanifin above both of them.
McKenzie (which is really a poll of NHL scouts): Hanifin 3; Provorov 8; Werenski 11 So NHL scouts had Hanifin quite a bit higher than both of those guys.
ISS: Hanifin 5, Provorov 7, Werenski 11
Hockey Prospects: Hanifin 5, Provorov 7, Werenski 10
Future Considerations: Hanifin 3, Provorov 6, Werenski 7
Sportsnet Damien Cox: Hanifin 4, Provorov 6, Werenski 10
McKeens: Hanifin 3, Provorov 5, Werenski 9
Button: Provorov 5, Werenski 7, Hanifin 11
THW: Hanifin 5, Provorov 9, Werenski 12
ESPN (Pronmann): Hanifin 5, Werenski 8, Provorov 14
THN: Hanifin 3, Provorov 6; Werenski 9
NHL CSS: Hanifin 3, Provorov 7, Werenski 9