I agree with everything you wrote but my question is how good do you think this collection of young players can be? Even if the majority of them reach their potential, it is not a Cup contender IMO. You note the players picked in the top 10 but the Hawks need more stars.
Look at the last 10 Cup teams. Now St Louis won without any clear-cut HOF players (Probably Pietrangelo but HOF voting is weird) but they had great depth and were very good everywhere. Plus, they barely won and might have been the weakest Cup winner of the decade. The rest of the decade was the Hawks with their 3 HOFers in their prime, near-prime Hossa, and crazy depth every year they won. Pittsburgh with their two generational talents. LA with prime Doughty, Kopitar, Quick, and a very deep, solid team. Boston had a Vezina-winning Thomas, prime Chara, and a very deep roster. Washington had Ovie, Kuznetzov, Backstrom, Carlson.
That trip down memory lane was to remind us that the vast majority of Cup winning teams have a couple HOF players in their prime. If the Hawks want to get back to contending for a Cup they will need a couple more elite, difference-making players. If Dach turns into Getzlaf that is definitely a big piece but you still need quite a bit more. You need at least 1 more top pairing dman to go with Boqvist. Musto is sure that Mitchell is that guy but odds are that he's a 2nd pairing guy. Was this year an anomaly and Debrincat turns back into the player we thought would push for 40 goals? Kubalik looks to be a nice top 6 winger. Strome looks to be a mediocre or less #2C which is valuable but nothing to get too excited about. And I am definitely not going to overreact to a nice couple scrimmages from Nylander. All this leads back to my thinking that the Hawks need a couple more elite, star, players to get back to being a contender. The best place to find those players are at the top of the draft.
