Since the 2011-2012 drafts (which had Tierney, DeMelo, Kuraly, and Blackwell), the only non-1st round Sharks picks to play 200+ games in the NHL are Kevin Labanc, Dylan Gambrell, Noah Gregor, and Mario Ferraro, and two of those (Gambrell, Gregor) only got there because they were the best options for terrible Sharks teams (Gambrell has already washed out of the NHL, Gregor is still hanging on as a plug).
History has taught us that trading up is almost always right, the only potential exception is targeting under-valued players like Ryabkin, Behm, and Cihar.
Don't forget the illustrious 22 career NHL games from the 2019 draft class.
That was only 5 players and no first rounders. 2020 we had 9 players and 5 made the show but barely.
Linus Karlsson is technically still playing for the Canucks but the 2018 draft also looks like it will produce 0 NHLers.
Same thing though. Only 5 picks. I didn't mind the Merk pick at the time as it was a bit of a luxury attempt at a high risk high reward player. What hurt that draft was trading our 2nd for Polak.
It's just a spectacular run when looked at over the course of 19 picks spanning 3 drafts. You would think that even throwing darts at the Central Scouting rankings you'd hit at least one NHL player with that many throws.
It's bad no doubt but I think most teams have rough stretches. Vegas, for example has gotten a whopping 26 games for them from their last 5 drafts combined.
Yeah but they're Vegas so they still managed to turn Dean and Edstrom into Barbashev and Hertl.
That's probably where DW was at his worse - maximizing the trade value of whatever prospects we had before the inevitably flamed out, although using Norris to get EK was a win in my books.
