Yes, but Draper's picks are all lower tier grinder types like James, or lower tier defenders like Cleveland. None of our 2nd round picks are exactly blowing the roof off expectations as lots of them look lucky if they will even have any NHL games. Pretty sure the 3 you mentioned were still held in a lot higher regard than any of our 2nd and after picks. To me my worry with Draper is more that he only seems to go after players who were similar in mold to himself. Hintz and Robertson in particular were more offensive picks than defence or grinder.
A team full of grinders won't do very well. Sometimes it is ok to draft a guy with offensive instincts who isn't necessarily good at defence. You generally aren't getting a hidden offensive gem outside round 1, when those players aren't putting up already good numbers in lower leagues.
Eh I think that’s hindsight. As a 21 year old Hintz had a similar AHL season as a 20 year old Kasper. 21 year old Mazur had a slightly better year. How confident is anyone that either of them has 70+ point potential?
Augustine had a better d+1 than Oettinger.
As for drafting ”grinders” I don’t really agree. I also don’t think when looking at which later round players have panned out that the key is always offensive production. One of the better 2nd or later rounders we missed so far is Brock Faber. He barely produced much better numbers than what Whipple, our recent 5th rounder, did. We chose Wallinder instead who on the surface has more offensive skill (and could still pan out). Buchelnikov, Lombardi, Dower-Nilsson, Plante etc. are also skill picks, doesn’t mean they work out to a higher degree, but it clearly shows that they’re looking for traits that are not mutually exclusive to being good offensively, productive and bad defensively.
Personally I’m probably ~80% confident all of Johansson, Mazur, Wallinder and Augustine will reach at least 100+ NHL games. Plante, Becher, Tuomisto, Lombardi, Savage, Anton Johansson, Söderblom, Finnie, Buchelnikov, NDN and a few others I think have chances too although only a few are realistically getting there.
Among that bunch, maybe there’s a legit impact player or two. I don’t think that’s awful unless I’m way off and essentially they all completely miss the mark.