No specific examples come to mind.... but just about any team trading up implies another trading down, and when teams have a handful of guys they see as having similar potential, that's when they move down to get extra picks.
EDIT: You might see limited upside for the team trading down, but they see upside at no risk. if you project some interesting prospects will be available later on in the draft, but right now you'd be picking a guy far ahead of where he should go.... why not trade down, get those extra picks, and pick the same guy you had your sights on anyways?
And while we tend, as fans, to focus on the high-end players, GMs have an organization to run - they need to have new kids being pumped in, given a chance, push vets if they can, and move onwards sooner or later. Adding 2nd rounders gives them options to add depth where they want it, and hopefully strike gold sooner or later with a star picked later than expected.
Each GM also has a timeline for when they need to return their team to the PO, as we are talking about trading up to a much higher draft slot here.
SJ had limited prospects in 2022, thus took the trade down from 11 to 27, added 2 seconds in the first half of the second from AZ. From their stance, at the beginning of a rebuild, if they didn't love who was there at 11, adding more lottery tickets was wise.
If you are a team needing to make the PO, adding extra picks doesn't do anything. You are preferring to get some help now for that 8th or whatever OA pick. Unless you can turn those extra picks into something from another club. Ie. Montreal with Newhook for a pair of seconds.
Otherwise, most of the teams picking high, are way more likely to keep their pick and take what they hope to be a higher end player rather than take their chances on multiple picks later.
I like to use a 200 game cutoff for what I would deem as someone who made it in the NHL. Needs 3 years to complete and most are not getting to 200 NHL games on their ELC. Would need a second contract. Goalies, say 25 starts.
2013 NHL draft, 2nd rounders at 200 games. Erne, De La Rose, Compher, Hagg, Jarry, Lehkonen, Carrier, Bertuzzi, Sanford have hit that mark. 9 players. These are guys turning 29 in 2024. There are a few who are within 50 games, but like Nic Petan, has played 41 games in the last 4 seasons and needs 30 to hit 200. Bowey, is in the KHL this year and last year was in the A, is at 158. Unlikely to see him get to 200.
2014 draft, it's at 8 players for now at 200 games.
2015 draft, very strong. 13 at 200 and probably 4 or 5 more who are close enough to realistically get to 200.
Typically under a coin flip shot of finding someone in round 2 who is a NHLer for 200 games or more.