That's fair. I look at Toronto's 19 and 20 drafts where Lilley was director and think they are pretty good. Are they as good as ours? No. But our 19 and 20 drafts were amazing, not many(or any) teams had better drafts those years then us. That said, the decision to not stay the course had already been made, first with the firing of Gorton and then later with Drury firing Bobrov. We'll see if Drury continues to revamp the department. As of now it is just Bobrov out, Lilley in. From using the wayback machine to the rangers front office page in the summer 2020, none of the other european or amateur scouts have changed, including Marshall Davidson and Ginnell both of whom came from CBJ with JD.
To me it would be more interesting to compare Lilley to who ever else was in the running. Then we could get more of a sense of Drury's thought process, like were we competing with Toronto for Hardy for AGM or Director and lost, or was Lilley our first choice? Most likely no one super amazing was available, I highly doubt someone like Al Murray from Tampa was interested. Unfortunately this information I will probably never have, lol.
As for missing on Fox... Everyone did. lol. I'm sure Morehouse as director of scouting in CBJ regrets taking Vitali Abramov 1 pick before Fox.
At the end of the day our path is our path. I'll freely admit that I liked what we had. Yes it needed pivots and changes, yes it had flaws, and it had strengths and weaknesses. But I think we also assembled a hell of a crew and were making smart selections, even beyond the obvious ones. Part of the confidence in their ability was the players they identified but didn't get because of lottery wins. So I generally felt our heads were in the right spots, whether the ping pong balls had us taking Lafreniere and Kakko, or Lundell and Zegras.
I think more changes are definitely coming though. So far, I've found myself wanting more. We'll see how the rest looks.
With regards to Fox, yeah others missed on him as well. I think Lilley becomes a little more glaring because it was his area of expertise for a long time, he was on the cusp of a major promotion, and Toronto ended up passing on two really good players from that program he followed. For better or worse, when you're a US National Team Scout, and your team hasn't had much success in that department, and you pass on one of the best players to come out of that program in years, twice, including taking a teammate from the same program, who busts, it's probably worth mentioning. Just like it would be if one of our guys had us pass on Schneider for Greig and had it backfire. The closer you are to the source, especially when it comes to picking between teammates, the more scrutiny it is going to draw. Just like it would in reverse if you come away with the better, but less heralded teammate. So it cuts both ways.