I think we have been seeing this for a while with the team and our scouts mentality, in particular with forwards. Zibanejad over Couturier. Lazar over Shinkaruk or Mantha. Even Noesen/Puempel ahead of Jensen / Saad.
Not that our picks didn't have skill, but there were more "pure skill" players available, and they were missing a little something on the character side to our scouts. Or were just pure one-dimensional.
The same thing happened this year. The most interesting thing Dorion said about Colin White was that "there were more skilled guys available" but they liked what he brought overall. So ending up with White/Gagne is certainly less pure skill than Konecny/Sprong, but it's part of a culture the team wants at forward. Rolling out your 12 forwards who all play a certain way at a base minimum, makes the unit overall greater than the sum of their parts. Even if it means we might not have a 35+ or even 30+ goal scorer.
On D, we tend to have taken a bit different approach, where skilled and strong skating d-men are more of a premium, with Karlsson, Ceci, Chabot and some others.
When it comes to picks in the 15-60 range, I don't mind that mentality overall. I do think Konecny "plays the right way" and is just as physical if not more so than White, but at 5'9 and already having shown some injury history, I get that our scouts opted for White.