Patrick accelerated things, but not by a great deal, he's still a year or two away from being an impact player.
Look at Toronto with Matthews, Marner, Nylander, Kadri and Rielly - a great young core but they still have to build a team around them.
When Hextall says he's only two years in I think he means he his first two years were spent moving out veterans for draft picks, the last two he's been moving in prospects. It may well be he underestimated how much needed to be done, this team wasn't a disaster area like the Devils, but between the salary cap and lack of talent in the pipeline, it wasn't in good shape.
Now like Toronto we have a core of young players to build around, Couts, Ghost, Patrick, TK, Provorov, Sanheim, Lindblom, but you need to build a team - replacing 8 or so scrubs isn't that easy, as we've seen, once you get past the 1st rd you have to cycle through a lot of guys like Weal, Cousins, Luby, etc. and hope to hit on a couple. That's why Hextall has been accumulating 1t rd picks (like this draft), even when you miss the floor is often Laughton, not Leier.
And trades are a hard way to build a team, hard to get something for nothing, so they're more useful reshaping the roster after you've built up talent (too many LHDs? Not enough RHDs? That's when you make a trade).
