I must've struck a nerve for you to argue from authority like this. Please enlighten us all with the wisdom that would justify picking no namers with no NHL significant NHL futures by single spots or single digit draft spots over all stars and future hall of famers?
Gillis clearly had no idea how to scout players, nor did he know how to direct his scouting staff towards the right qualities in players that would lead to picking the right players that would perform well in the NHL, nor did he possess the ability to read a player's character the way a GM like Benning would employ an AGM like John Weisbrod to do.
In contrast, Benning possesses all of these abilities and will make off the board picks like Pettersson who was rated 9th, and because he knows how to do all those things. With the exception of Virtanen and McCann, which we can forgive because it was his first year and he didn't have all year to work with the scouts in developing the draft lists, he nailed every single first round pick and many more late round picks than nearly any other GM in the same time period. However you can still see in that 2014 draft him make some pretty nice picks in the later rounds which shows his residual draft skills taking over after a rough first round.
If Benning was the GM instead of Gillis in 2008, there's no doubt that he would've supplemented the Sedins, Kesler, and Luongo with several young stars like Karlsson, Rakell, and others. It's no use dwelling on the past but if we are going to go there it should be said and people should realize we should have won a cup if we had even halfway decent drafting during Gillis' tenure.
It's a good thing that Benning is the GM and hopefully he will remain with the organization in a significant capacity, perhaps he will be promoted from GM duties, because his impact on the scouting is night and day from the way it was without him and drafting is by far the most important aspect of team building in the new NHL by far.