Right now I certainly agree with our FO's decision to keep our 1st round pick. We are far from guaranteed to make the playoffs and this season may show we have work to do before we hit that level. This draft class seems to truly be better than recent ones so having our first is a nice safety valve. It would actually be a bit ridiculous to move our first now, I know there isn't a debate on that really but with our strength in drafting + strong class + uncertainty with a young team it's a no brainer to keep it. The 2022-23 Columbus Blue Jackets will again heavily rely on finishing and that has the chance to take us to some surprising heights or disappointing lows by nature.
That is not to say I think it's "worth" missing the playoffs for the sake of our future because us being a playoff team means the guys we already have are good.
The 2023 guys I'm familiar with are exclusively the top guys - Bedard, Michkov, Fantilli, Sale, Yager, Dvorsky - and they all seem to truly be very good prospects. In the 2022 class I ended up liking the defensemen a fair bit better than the forwards, to me Jiricek, Mateychuk, Nemec, Korchinski, and Mintyukov collectively were more impressive than Slafkovsky, Wright, Cooley, Gauthier, and Kasper. However 2023 seems to have a forward stronghold at the top, I'm not sure the recent trend of defensemen infiltrating the top 6 picks will continue. Obviously these guys have not played their DY yet but as of now it's forwards at the top.
I'm sure this board will get even more familiar with Yager as we follow Mateychuk's development this season. He's quite good and has the chance to go 10th or something if some guys blow up this year and pass him. Who knows, maybe Michkov falls to us with all the uncertainty. With our pool and roster we can afford to take risks other teams can't. As a young team that (at least should) have low expectations from the outside we do have a seemingly strong draft class to fall back on. It won't be the end of the world if this season doesn't go as optimistic fans expect.