How does how the Sharks fare compare to the rest of the league? that'd be interesting to look at.
Also, Hertl was not the best pick, Vasilevskiy was still on the board.
So, the thing is...this kind of analysis works particularly well for the Sharks. During this period (2005 to 2019), the Sharks had consistency in their front office, including the same GM, scouting staff, and developmental team. Not to mention Burke as head scout for the entire timeframe (aside from two years sharing with his nepotism jr.); it becomes easier to draw broader conclusions about their drafting effectiveness.
However, this stability isn't mirrored across the rest of the league, particularly with GM roles. So you can't really get enough of a sample size to do the analysis.
For the sake of curiosity, I pretended that GMs had no role in scouting. But let me stress that this is
untrue; GMs can and are very influential.
Having tainted the analysis from the start...
Eyeballing the drafting from memory, and removing Vegas and Seattle, you have 6 teams that are outliers in BPA "ratio": Dallas, Chicago, and Tampa Bay as "good", and Edmonton, Montreal, and Vancouver as bad. Interestingly, all three struggling teams are Canadian, which might suggest a confounding variable—though it could just be a coincidence. Note that I mentally double-counted goalies; for instance, in 2012, while Vasilevskiy was the standout pick, I still recognized players like Forsberg, Hertl, and Teravainen as BPA despite them being drafted earlier.
However, the interesting part came when I looked at personnel turnover (only GM/scouting/AHL coaching and notable development staff!). Excluding Arizona and Winnipeg for obvious reasons, and disregarding retirements, I found that while no team had exceptionally high turnover, five teams exhibited notable stability: Chicago, Dallas, Tampa Bay, San Jose, and Detroit.
For Chicago, Dallas, and Tampa Bay, the tempting explanation is good drafting = job security. But San Jose and Detroit, despite having BPA ratios that didn't stick out, still had fairly low turnover. So to me, that points to a lack of accountability for the Sharks.