I guess they don't look COMPLETELY miserable... signing Wennberg and Schwartz at least lets them round out a lineup...
Schwartz - Gourde - Eberle
Jarnkrok - Wennberg - Donskoi
Tanev - McCann - Appleton
Blackwell - Geekie - Bastian
True
Giordano - Larsson
Oleksiak - Dunn
Soucy - Lauzon
Fleury - Borgen
Grubauer
Driedger
... it's a... lineup. I think we only mainly dwell on a few picks where Francis clearly missed out on gathering actual player assets (Columbus, Chicago, Philadelphia primarily)... and then the goalie fiasco... and then the lack of accumulating any extra draft picks or in any way leveraging his leftover cap space. So there are definitely some shortcomings and he definitely left asset value on the table. But he still got about 80% of it right, to be fair. And signing 6 fairly significant UFAs overall was not necessarily anticipated (Schwartz, Wennberg, Larsson, Oleksiak, Grubauer, Driedger). You'd think with all the time and options they had they could have come closer to 100%, though.
But I wouldn't say it was a completely unmitigated disaster... he still made the right picks - or close enough - in the large majority of cases. That he could also have had 3 other players, maybe another couple 2nd round picks, etc, shouldn't be an irrecoverable error. Slightly unfortunate, but not catastrophic.
I don't think it's a playoff team by any stretch. But they also could have done worse.
Vegas picked:
Perron - Marchessault - Karlsson (6 goals version)
Bellemare - Haula - Neal
Carrier - Eakin - Nosek
Leipsic - Lindberg - Thorburn
Pulkkinen/Brickley
Schmidt - Miller
Emelin - Methot
Van Riemsdyk - Engelland
Sbisa - Merrill
Schlemko - Stoner
Garrison - McNabb
Reinhart
Fleury
Pickard
Berube
I don't think Vegas did any better in terms of players selected. Where they killed was in the trades and bribes, and if you take that off the table via some combination of NHL GMs learning their lesson and Francis sticking stubbornly to inflated bribe thresholds, well, that's mainly where Seattle fell short. Vegas got Shea Theodore, Reilly Smith, Alex Tuch, 3 1st round picks, 4 2nd round picks, and half a dozen later picks in direct bribes. Then on top of that they traded 5 of the guys they picked for 5 more later draft picks. That's almost 20 extra draft picks accumulated, which helped stock many of their subsequent roster-building trades. By contrast, Seattle received... one 2nd and one 4th?