Sensational nonsense, there's plenty of examples of brutal drafting throughout the leagues history.
And I referenced
that drafting topic in another thread today. While the GM ultimately wears the success or failure of a draft, I like to take a more nuanced view as there's so many factors that go into it and it's very likely the part of the job that the GM has the least input in. So I like to expand the view to include scouting regimes. When Gillis was hired, the scouting apparatus was built by Burke & Nonis and had Ron Delorme running the draft. When Gillis departed, Crawford was in place along with a bunch of new hires like Judd Bracket.
So back to that drafting topic and repeating myself, they break it down into 4 year groups.
2008-2011 with Ron Delorme the head scout - 30th in the league
2012-2015 with 3/4 years Eric Crawford as head scout - 12th in the league
2016-2019 with 3/4 years of Judd Brackett as head scout - 18th in the league (this one obviously inconclusive)
Basically Gillis' "drafting" looks so bad because he left the Brian Burke crew in place too long. When he was fired with the most recent drafts still not NHL ready people used that first span to proclaim how bad he was and never really adjusted the opinion when hindsight showed things turning around. Had he been kept another year to get credit for the 2014 draft that label would have been put entirely to rest.