Lol, you just aren’t getting it. Yes, as prospects, they were 1st overall talents. You’re looking at those guys with the benefit of hindsight. You really don’t understand how flawed the logic is there? Look at them as prospects. Prospects like those would go high, if not number one in nearly every draft, except maybe Phillips and Stefan, which makes sense because those are probably the two weakest drafts of all time. Players can bust or disappoint due any number of factors - you can’t just look back with hindsight and say they were never 1st overall talents
Yakupov: ~50 g, 100+ point pace, blazing speed, slick hands, ridiculous shot, insane motor and relentless in puck pursuit. He was the consensus number one prospect. A player like that is going top 5 in ANY year, if not number one.
Erik Johnson: 6’6”, 220 lb smooth skating two-way beast, above 1.0p/gp in the USNTDP, mean, nasty, and physical. A player like that is going number one in plenty of other years. He was really no different than a guy like Owen Power. An injury in his draft year muddied the waters a bit, but STL took the bet anyway and I don’t blame them. It didn’t work out as well as they hoped, but injuries played a huge part in that. Most teams take that bet; dude was a unicorn with everything you could want in a prospect.
Rick DiPietro: there was a trend around that time of goalies being drafted high. With the benefit of hindsight, teams are now hesitant to do that because it most often didn’t work out. He was also wrecked by injuries and never hit his full potential. This one’s kind of an N/A. Different era.
Bryan Berard: a 1.29 p/gp two-way defenseman, won rookie of the year, was OHL first all star team, and led his team to an OHL championship, putting up 24 points in 21 playoff games. A player like that is going number one in most years. A devastating eye injury derailed and shortened his NHL career.
Alexander Daigle: I don’t even need to go into this one too much. He was a generational prospect on par with a guy like Bedard. A prospect like this is going 1st overall in all but a handful of years out of the last 30+ years since.
Doug Wickenheiser: 170 points, 89 goals in 71 WHL games lmao. Dude was a phenom, and one of the best prospects ever seen up to that point. But you with your magical hindsight expertise would’ve known not to take him and all these other guys, right? “Not a 1st overall talent”
