It's like the advanced stats where they count shots because goals are rare. If you look at the previous drafts and sort a bit (by points for forwards, by history for D and G) most of the top players, and more as time passes, are first round picks. Only a few players outside the top few make an impact. Getting Gallagher and Subban is enough to make an impact. It is hard to say whether the successes are random or planned.
The big problem with the habs (and Oilers, and even the Bruins) is that the clueless GMs keep trading good players. Sure, Bergevin is an idiot, but most GMs are idiot ex-players. People talk about moneyball but they forget that it's not just stats. The big change is getting away from the guys with primary school educations and no real knowledge who justify their jobs with playing and management experience. Lots of people crap on Bergevin's playing ability, and there is something to the bitterness he and MT and CJ and many others feel at having been good but not great (Bergevin was, at worst one of the thousand best hockey players on the planet. I'm quite sure I'm not top thousand on the planet in anything) but limiting yourself to a pool of francophones is a very small limitation relative to limiting the pool of general managers (who need to know stats, advanced stats, economics, contract law, business management, marketing, advertising, and many other things) to a pool of 2000 or so athletes with no significant education (with some notable exceptions who have generally fleeced the other guys) is completely insane.
I'm real sure that if the habs hired from the HEC instead of from NHL/AHL grads the language requirement would be a detail.
Drafts are tough. You can do everything right and still fail. Wickenheiser had great stats. Daigle was a consensus number 1 pick, so was Yakupov. It's hard to tell which guys are going to continue to improve after the draft.
On the other hand you have the potato theory, and MB fails that one big time. Pension plan puppets, the eyes on the prize equivalent for the leafs did a slightly biased evaluation of their GM by comparing him to a potato, but the potato could re-sign players automatically with a given increase that I don't recall. MB, like the leafs GM, completely, absolutely, abjectly fails this, especially since it would have arbitarily given Radulov a small raise. On the other hand the potato would have given Markov a raise and he would have earned it in spite of what most people would have thought. In retrospect:
Give Radulov 7-8 million long term.
Give Markov 6 million plus short term (2 years, no problem).
Stay the hell away from Drouin and his huge contract.
Void as many MB trades as possible in retrospect.
Don't dump tons of defensemen, let the Knights take whoever but don't screw up your team. Beaulieu and Emelin were flawed but they had elite aspects. They were massively better then the third pairing guys who were pathetically put in to replace them.
The further back you go the better you end up because MB's significant trades suck and the significant ones absolutely bury the insignificant ones by definition. Dumping players to try to shed $4million in salary while you throw money at Drouin who does not make the team better (seriously, power play specialists are only worthwhile if you understand that they are power play specialists and avoid letting them get destroyed playing big minutes at even strength, like Dr Recchi, don't let them play against top two line players) overall.
</drunken rant>
I don't feel better. Like many others I've lost interest in the team. I really thought MT was brought in to tank. His first year he exceeded all expectations, why did he go back to what had made him fail consistently everywhere after that first year? Because he was a not very bright guy who played hocket quite well. Fine, he sucked at the NHL level but he was probably one of the top 5000 hockey players in the world. Does that mean he can coach? No. His big skill was hockey, not coaching. Find someone who may not be able to play like Gretzky but who knows how to coach. Do sprinter's coaches run/swim fast? Can tennis coaches play? Some people can study and coach without playing. Deep sigh.... If you are looking for intellectual ability don't look for it among the guys who dump Dougie Hamilton, a top 25-50 player, because he goes to museums on road trips instead of hooter's.