Potvin29 said:
The way scouting has been the last 10-15 years I'm far more confident in higher picks panning out. Seems like it's to the point where high picks being "busts" is more of an exception to the rule. Obviously the expectations will change depending on the draft year.
There's a difference, though, between players being "busts" and them not turning out quite the way you want.
For instance, here are the #5 picks in the 10 years before Morgan Rielly
Ryan Whitney, Thomas Vanek, Blake Wheeler, Carey Price, Phil Kessel, Karl Alzner, Luke Schenn, Brayden Schenn, Nino Neiderreiter, Ryan Strome
And here are the #4 picks in the ten years before Marner:
Sam Bennett, Seth Jones, Griffin Reinhart, Adam Larsson, Ryan Johanssen, Evander Kane, Alex Pietrangelo, Thomas Hickey, Nicklas Backstrom, Benoit Pouliot
So you're right. There's not much in the way of real Patrik Stefan-esque busts there. I guess you could say that four of those twenty could sort of fairly be called busts(Whitney, Luke Schenn, Hickey, Pouliot) with about the same amount of no doubt elite talents(Price, Pietrangelo, Backstrom, Kessel) and then a bunch of guys who range from good to very good to too soon to tell.
So it seems to me that what I said sort of holds up. The odds are pretty strong that at least one of the guys is going to be a good NHL player but not someone who's the cornerstone type of franchise talent. Like, if Morgan Rielly becomes as good as, say, Brent Seabrook he's not a bust by any definition but in that situation the team is almost certainly still looking around for a #1 defenseman.