They are completely different type of players though. Thompson, Robertson, Tkachuk all had good hockey IQ as prospects. It was their athleticism they needed to work on.
Boucher is the opposite. One of the strongest and fastest and athletic in his leagues, but poor IQ makes him underperform his tools.
I mentioned Thompson and Robertson in the context of evaluating draft picks based on what the player actually becomes. If a team would have drafted either player 10th overall in their respective drafts, that team would likely have been criticized at the time but the end result would have proved that they had good insight.
The opposite is to take a completely principled approach to drafting. In that context, it doesn't matter what the player eventually becomes, what matters is whether they have the right indicators at the time of the draft and whether there is a consensus within scouts across the league that a prospect should be ranked that high. For example, a person could argue that Logan Brown was a good draft pick if they only rely on a subset of indicators and scouting consensus and are not as concerned with the eventual end result. That kind of approach would discourage speculation, but it would also mean that they wouldn't have drafted players like Thompson or Robertson much higher in the draft.
From a purely principled approach to drafting, a player like Tyler Boucher is a quality 2nd round pick. A principled drafter would find that Boucher lacked a sufficient number of the correct indicators and that projections of what he could become would be far too speculative to want to risk a high pick on him.
A speculative drafter would speculate on what they thought a player like Boucher could eventually become and take the risk drafting him high knowing that if it doesn't pan out then they will look really dumb, but if it does then it justified the risk and they get a better payoff then a more principled drafter.
That is why the end result is important here, it was a speculative draft choice, which means that it can only ever look good in the end. That doesn't mean it will look good in the end, just that the potential payoff and possible justification will only be clear by the end result.
As for your comments on Boucher, I don't see an IQ issue. Maybe he doesn't have the right level of deception to his game, but that can improve with experience. If there is something that is holding Boucher back from being a much more productive player, it is likely his hands. His shot is really good, very powerful and quick release. His accuracy is decent, but not quite where it needs to be. With some improvement he could be a good goal scorer at the NHL level. But his challenge is more puck control. He can't really pull off complex dangles, or he is just more limited with the types of movements he can create with the puck and still maintain control of it.
The fact that his puck control is not at that elite level, just limits his ability to produce points. It isn't that he can't pull of dekes or toe drags or anything like that, he just isn't as effective at pulling off a succession of dekes. A player with better puck control can use that to generate time and space for themselves and allow for more passing and shooting opportunities to unfold. A player with more limited puck control has one deke and then needs to make a pass or take a shot, or if they try something too complex they lose control of the puck and then lose all time and space.
Boucher still generates some very good chances below the dots and his passing and vision are very underrated there. His hands actually look better when he is stationary then when he is skating with the puck. He is kind of like Tkachuk in that sense. So if we were to be optimistic about some higher upside to Boucher we could look at how Tkachuk's hands have continued to improve as a pro and now he is starting to find a way to make those plays while also moving his feet. Maybe Boucher can learn from Tkachuk and take on some of his training methods, and if we are luck maybe he can develop in a similar way.
Boucher's more limited puck control mean that his best tools can only really be demonstrated with a lot of team structure. At the pro level, if he is working the cycle in the o zone with some good players, you will see his passing and vision on display, you will see him get to scoring positions and either score goals or get hard shots on net that the goalie struggles to control. He will be able to complement other skill players who are able to maintain that o zone pressure, keep a cycle or possession going and allow him to do give and gos or get in position to get shots off.
Boucher isn't a guy that will as much drive the offensive play, instead he has the ability to really support a play driver. He is kind of like a lot of the players that Crosby has developed good chemistry with throughout his career. A lot of them were arguably more depth type players that really developed solid chemistry with him and knew how to support his play. So you could argue that if Boucher ends up being a good offensive player at the NHL level, it will be because he develops some excellent chemistry with some really high quality offensive players. We already saw a flash of that in preseason where Boucher looked good on a line with Norris and Tkachuk.
