I didn't say that Hitchcock was where all things related to offense went to die. Saying his system favors one type of player over another isn't the same thing as saying all players who don't fit his ideal will suck.
He favors simple, direct, north-south plays. Backes and Steen are quintessential north-south players, so it's not exactly surprising to see them thrive in that atmosphere. Perron and Oshie were like cramming square pegs into round holes. They did their best, and they still put up decent numbers because they're talented, were playing with talented players, and were getting PP time on productive units, but Hitchcock's offensive system was clearly not a natural fit for them. Both have looked better in different systems. Same can be said of Stastny, to some extent.
Schwartz is so well rounded that he can look natural playing any number of ways. Tarasenko is basically a one-man show when it comes to creating his own offense, or he was, so it didn't really matter. He wasn't relying on East-West plays to set him up because he was creating his own shots at ES, and he sure wasn't benefiting from (or contributing much to) Hitchcock's north-south game plans. He was just doing his own thing, and talented enough to produce anyway.
North-South play has its benefits, especially defensively, but the weaknesses were routinely and thoroughly exposed in the playoffs when good teams would overload defensively and the Blues would struggle to break the pressure. They weren't fast enough to simply out-skate the other team up and down the ice, and their philosophical aversion to East-West play made them predicable and easy to counter when teams could really focus on game planning against them.
When I look at a team with Tarasenko, Schwartz, ROR, Schenn, Steen, Perron, Bozak, Maroon, Fabbri, Kyrou, Thomas, Blais, etc., I see a roster capable of exploiting East/West play, with most of the above being naturally predisposed to playing that sort of game. They don't need to be the 90's Red Wings, but there shouldn't be a philosophical aversion to it, either.
I'm firmly convinced that a coach like Quenneville could get more out of this roster than Hitchcock.