I think expansion is making and will continue to make rebuilding much more difficult than in a 30 team league.
The success rate for a top 1, top 3, 5, 10, 20, late 1st, 2nd rounder, 3rd rounder and beyond seems pretty arbitrary at this point. You just have to get lucky with your picks and hypothetically while you have a better chance of a pick panning out the higher they’re selected it’s far from certain you’re getting a guaranteed great player by drafting high.
I looked at the top 10 picks from the last 8 or so years and the success rate wasn’t super promising. Even if they’re full time nhl players or very good nhl players there’s still differing levels of impact there. There’s a huge difference between a McDavid—>J. Hughes—>Slafkovsky. You could get a home run 1st OVR like Matthews and have them be poor playoff performers. You could get the super-hyped kid like Bedard and have him struggle with a terrible roster.
One could also argue that draft picks are very overrated and GMs should be trading them for proven nhl talent in this 32+ team league. The Hawks traded for Seth Jones, a controversial trade no doubt. They traded the 6th (Jiricek), 12th (Sillinger), and former 8th (Boqvist) for 9 years of Seth Jones and Nolan Allen. Look at all those high picks back to Columbus! Bad trade for Chicago yeah? Well maybe not. Jones has his warts but he’s playing 25+ minutes a night and giving us 45+ points a year. While still early, how are Jiricek and Sillinger looking for CBus right now? Jiricek is pouting in the AHL, Sillinger is a 30 point player, and Boqvist is rarely healthy and he’s already on another team getting only 11 minutes a night.
Long post but tanking is not the be all end all of team construction anymore. I hope the Hawks are done with it after this season and try to be a playoff team from here on out.