In the National Hockey League, drafting and developing future NHL anchors is as big of a guessing game as anything. There are zero ways to account for stumbles in a player’s natural progression, or how their draft-year talent will translate to professional hockey.
No team is a better example of this than the Dallas Stars. The only two premier skill players the Stars have hand-picked and prepared within the organization are John Klingberg and Jamie Benn, two miraculous and fortuitous first-round Entry Draft selections that somehow panned out.
On the flip-side, the Stars have produced total flops from higher-round players that were expected to contribute at the level of Benn and Klingberg.