NHL teams are imo, in general, very conservative, they'd rather select players who will likely never even be AHL regulars. Evidently, it's my opinion, but I think the NHL drafts at least 50 guys who have a really small chance of becoming NHL regulars, and even then in a very limited role.
Big, physical players that play well without the puck (and in junior, imo, that's fairly relative...) but don't have much else shouldn't be drafted. The likeliness that they ever play more than a replacement role on an NHL team is less than 1%. I know coaches like this kind of players, but these guys aren't projectable at the next level.
You can't be happy drafting prospects that you don't sign when prospects that showed clear signs of talent in their draft years were passed over. It just means that you made the wrong choice, unless somehow you didn't see the talent (but then others have, in which case you might want to go back and check what/why you missed).
Just like I said in this thread last year, guys like Dionicio should 100% be targeted with picks from the 5th to the 7th. He is the kind of player who showed advanced skills with the puck and offensive IQ, which few players ever develop (I'm talking observation of the player here, not points). He was playing on a bad Niagara squad in 2021-2022 but he showed a lot of improvement throughout the year. Keep in mind that he used to play as a forward and was a late conversion to the D position. His skating and his defensive reads needed work. Still, he had the coveted size and physicality.
My opinion, which I know differs from the general NHL mentality, is that you should draft for players with skills that are hard to teach from the 5th round+, and then help them develop what is easier to learn/improve. It's not like these picks are worth much anyway.
