Yep, in reaching the NHL they aren't as terrible as others, but as far as what their players do when they get there they have a very poor track record, especially for high picks. For example, as bad as the Lightning drafting has been prior to a few years ago, they still hit on superstars like Lecavalier and Stamkos ... FL has never had that go their way.
To be fair, the issue there is that the Panthers never seem to get the #1 overall pick in years where there's a clear-cut #1. When they took Bouwmeester in '02 he was
their top pick, but they were able to take him third overall after trading down and swinging a minor deal to make sure he'd be there, passing over Nash and Lehtonen - and in all fairness, neither of them has really accomplished much despite some individual success, and Lehtonen isn't even in the league anymore. In '03 Horton was supposedly their guy and Duds traded down again, but again it wasn't a clear-cut #1 situation, and Horton was eclipsed by Fleury and Staal...granted a big part of that is that Horton was a Keenan type of player, and the NHL changed after a lockout the following year making Staal's particular bag of skills more valuable. Meanwhile the Panthers had Luongo and didn't think they'd need another goalie, hence passing up on two high-ranked goaltending prospects in consecutive years.
When Tampa got #1 overall in 1998, Lecavalier was the undisputed top prospect. Same again with Stamkos. Tampa has been less successful when picking later in the first round. In '92, entering the league, they had the top pick and took Hamrlik over Yashin, Kasparaitis, Stillman, Gonchar, and Straka. In '93 they took Gratton #3. Jason Wiemer #8 in '94. Daymond Langkow #5 in '95. Their pick in '96 missed the mark completely and played 5 NHL games. Paul Mara in '97 at #7 played 734 games but was a mediocre player...'98 seems to have been their best draft when they grabbed Vinnie and Brad Richards #1 and #64. Other than Stamkos and I think the jury's still out on Hedman, their drafting has been atrocious. I'd take the Panthers' drafts, with their lack of stars, over the Lightning's any day. Hell, in '01 we got Weiss because they took Svitov right before him...where's Svitov these days?
And this year, again the Panthers have the top overall pick, but there's a little debate about who the top prospect is...so again, it'll be a crap shoot whether they truly get the best prospect at #1. Yet again they lost out last year when there was no doubt who to take. In the lockout draft when Crosby was #1, the Panthers lost out because the league decided to screw them because they'd already had the #1 pick for two years straight and gave them the least chance to get #1 that year.
I'd overall just blame the Panthers' drafting on bad luck...same thing that seems to plague them everywhere. If they get a good player (Niedermeyer for instance) something happens to ruin him (Lindros blind-side check and concussion).
But here's a list of substantial players the Panthers drafted:
'93 - Niedermayer, Weekes
'94 - Jovonovski, Warrener, Ryan Johnson
'95 - Dvorak, Worrell (borderline, 391 games played), Kuba
'96 - Kvasha
'97 - Huselius
'98 - Spacek
'99 - Auld, Hagman
'00 - no one
'01 - Weiss, Krajicek (328 games), Majesky (202 games, borderline but he was a 9th round pick)
'02 - Bouwmeester, Campbell
'03 - Horton, Stewart (262 games, admittedly poor for a 1st rounder), Kreps (232 games), Glass (265th overall, played 377 games to date and still active)
'04 - Olesz (365 games), Booth
'05 - no one
'06 - Frolik
'07 - Ellerby (207 games)
using a lower threshhold for the remaining years:
'08 - Markstrom
'09 - Kulikov, Shore, Knight (only 7 NHL games but still promising), Timmins (only 24 games with Panthers, but potentially a good checking line guy)
'10 - Gudbranson, Bjugstad, Howden, Petrovic all have seen NHL minutes, Brickley is likely to, and McFarland, Brittain and Hyman are still on the radar
'11 - Huberdeau, Trochek, Racine have all seen the NHL already, Grimaldi and Rau still have good potential.
'12 - Matheson, Hodges still solid prospects
'13 - Barkov in the NHL, McCoshen had a solid NCAA debut, and Weegar stood out in QMJHL.
You stated that the 2010 class has more NHL games than three years combined, but you've cherry picked three of the team's worst draft years in which the Panthers had no real standouts at all and almost all the players have come and gone and compare it to the one season where they had the most outstanding draft. It's a meaningless comparison.
A better comparison will be a few years from now, to see if the 2009-2013 drafts are significantly better than the team's first five drafts, 1993-1997, or 2001-2005. Those are the best stretches in team history, granted each of those periods has one or two bomb years at the end, so hopefully the most recent period will eclipse them both. Be nice if they were eclipsed COMBINED.