And until the last year, Stars fans always moaned about how bad we were at drafting. On our board, I analyzed the total games played by both Nill and Niewy as GM's. Surprisingly, GM Joe still holds a lead. While his very first pick (Scott Glennie) played all of 1 game in the NHL, Faksa, Oleksiak, and even Jack Campell played many games, as did some other later picks.
With the current draft crop, I have no doubt Nill will catch him soon, in both the quantity of games played and quality.
I have told this story before here, but in the late 90's I sat next to Bob Gainey on a plane. Among the pleasant conversation, he noted that it takes switching out 5-6 players to transform a roster, providing they are the right 5-6. (25-33% of the roster) In the next two years, it took more than that in Belfour, Verbeek, Niewendyke, Hull, Sydor, Zubov, Chambers, Keane, Carbo, Skrudland, Chambers, etc., via trade, drafing (Langenbrunner) or UFA to supplement Modano, Lehtinen, Hatcher, and Mattvichuck, drafted earlier. Voila, it resulted in the '99 Cup.
Given that was pre-cap, the current Stars team is more impressive to me, although I am not sure they will win the Cup, which is TBD, and still only a 25% chance ATM. Building mostly with two drafts is better than two years of unlimited spending on UFA, not to mention, that team started descending quickly after the 2000 Finals, whereas there is a chance that this team can contend for a long time.