I'm pretty confident that most players who are putting in a decent amount of effort will get the support of fans. Miller is clearly taking a lot of shifts off. Boeser looks like he doesn't care and seems remarkably lazy playing defense. Horvat is all about scoring goals and seems to have given up on the parts of his game that made him a more complete player.
Miller and Boeser are playing like this despite being given the support of large financial payouts. Horvat seems to have grown tired of playing for a crap organization and is looking to move on. I've got little issue with this as he's done his best for years to support this bottom dwelling pool swill.
The issue raised about trading picks, or the value of picks I find particularly irritating, is that the Canucks use picks to get rid of poor contracts and use picks to get players in trades. It's extremely rare for them to trade the players they don't feel fit the club for picks, so there's always a net loss in picks, which ultimately hurts your player development.
You don't need to be drafting first overall to get good players and the Canucks are evidence enough of that. If your goal is to draft first overall, then as others have posted, it's likely not a very good plan because it's too contingent on simple luck. The goal should be to develop a good roster by trading your good players who may not fit the structure of your roster or the timeline for when your team will peak.
Identifying Pettersson, Hughes and Demko as the players you're going to build around isn't a failure of imagination. Thinking you're going to turn this turnip truck into a cup contending team based on everything working to your advantage is a poor shot selection. Resigning Miller was a very shortsighted decision and we didn't even need to wait for the contract to begin to see that play out.
Anyway, we're still far, far better off than under Benning, but the clown show continues. Good management will produce a good team, and I'm not confident this is good management.