I honestly believe teams factor these things in. When the Devils took two RWs at #7 and #18 in the 2020 draft, there was simply no way the Devils were taking a third RW at #20. It did not matter how hard a scout in the room argued that a Perreault or Gunler was the highest-upside guy left in the draft. To me, those guys were off the table once Mercer was picked.
Again, this is a matter of opinion (we don't know how it is for sure) but if I was a GM, I picked Holtz and Mercer already and I believed that e. g. Foerster is the best player available at #20, I'd pick the 3rd RW. This would be especially true for centers, since they can switch to wing and partially for defence because if you are icing 3 good LD or 3 good RD, there's a good chance that because you drafted way too many defensemen but also there's a chance that it caused your defence to be elite.
By the same token, it could be countered with the fact that heavy focus on forwards meant that Devils didn't spend 1st and 2nd round picks on defensemen in recent years besides Smith and Okhotyuk, which combined the fact that the only d-man from Lou era that wasn't in his 30s was Severson caused the lack of quality depth at this position and it's very hard to build the defence without literally drafting it (unless you're VGK and can sign Pietrangelo) but again, Devils didn't draft a d-men with their elite picks because they were forced to take BPA:
1) in 2017 either Hischier or Patrick
2) In 2019 either Kakko or Hughes,
3) In 2020 after Sanderson and Drysdale were picked going for a d-man would be a crazy reach.
An example of a team that drafted their defence is Dallas. But if Dallas picked #1 in 2017 draft and Jersey picked #3, would Dallas defence look the same? It wouldn't.
Let's say Ottawa wins the lottery this year. This is a team loaded with prospects/young talent on the wing (Stutzle, Tkachuk etc.) and on D (Chabot, Sanderson etc.) but lacking for a top-line caliber C anywhere in the system. I don't think it matters if their scouts rate Power the highest or Clarke the highest -- I think they're taking Beniers.
I agree with you but, by definition, d-men are harder to project and carry higher risk in terms of how well the transition to NHL goes. I think that Beniers could be taken at #1 even by teams that have no problems with center depth e. g. us, LA or Buffalo.
I think teams factor in organizational want and need, and I think this will occur even more this year -- a draft where it has been more difficult than ever to assess and rate many prospects with precision. If the Devils pick #6 and Clarke, Guenther and Eklund are available? Maybe they will have Guenther ranked slightly higher than the other two, but I think they would take Clarke anyway because the difference between Guenther and Clarke won't be as large as their organizational chasm at RD.
History shows that to a certain extent it is right, teams sometimes reach to fill the positional need but it very often fails e. g. Kotkaniemi at #3, Hayton at #5 etc. Nashville, a team with a very good defence already, picked Seth Jones and he turned out to be a star.
Overall, I think that if you think that player A will be better than player B, you should always pick player A, the lists should differ not because of different needs of teams but because the scouts have different quality and value different things. But this vision would basically turn your mock drafts into rankings, which would make it less interesting.