It's no secret you need stars -- superstars -- to win in the NHL, and it's no secret you find them at the top of the draft. As the talent level rises across the league, so does the value of players who transcend it.
The best player remaining in this year's playoffs is former first overall Nathan MacKinnon, whose Avalanche look like the best bet to win it. Unless of course the Lightning defend their title with former first overall pick Steven Stamkos and former second overall pick Victor Hedman.
Does anyone else besides Boston really have a shot? And remember, the Bruins were up and down for most of this season before trading for former first overall pick Taylor Hall.
Even with Hall, the Bruins will be bucking a trend if they go the distance. Because eight of the last nine Stanley Cup winners had a homegrown future Hall of Famer drafted within the top two picks. 11 of the last 12 had a homegrown star drafted within the top two picks.
The only outlier is arguably the most improbable champion in NHL history, the worst-to-first Blues of 2018-19. They don't win without former fourth overall pick Alex Pietrangelo. To find an outlier before that, you have to go all the way back to ... the 2007-08 Red Wings, led up front by seventh-rounder Henrik Zetterberg and sixth-rounder Pavel Datsyuk, on the blueline by third-rounder Nicklas Lidstrom and in goal by third-rounder Chris Osgood.
Which puts Steve Yzerman and the present-day Wings in a funny position, at once trying to defy the NHL's recent history and mirror their own.
Once again, Detroit whiffed in the lottery Wednesday night. The club with the most losses in the NHL the past five seasons -- 242 and counting! -- will draft sixth overall for the third time in four years and outside the top three for the fifth year in a row. It's backwards and unfair and reflective of a system that wasn't adjusted until the damage was done, but in the words of Yzerman, "the system is what it is."
"I'm not losing a minute's sleep over it."
Yzerman also isn't fretting the NHL's competitive trend, even as his former team reflects it. Is he confident a Cup winner can be built in today's league without a top two pick in the draft?
"For sure, for sure," he said. "We’re going to do the best we can. If the plan is to be really bad and get a first or second pick, it’s hard to get. As all of us see, we haven’t been able to get a top-three pick. We’ll find a way. You look back on the teams that have been there, I think Carolina won the Cup without a top pick. It does happen. We’ll build a good team and figure out a way. We’ll get a superstar along the way in the draft somewhere."
And look, what else was Yzerman going to say? Nope, no shot of success unless we catch a damn break. Tune in next year. He answered as optimistically and reasonably as he could -- if not entirely accurately. The 2005-06 Hurricanes won largely on the back of former second overall pick Eric Staal (and the Jordan Binnington-like arrival of Cam Ward). Still, Yzerman was notably bullish on this: We'll find a superstar somewhere.
He isn't ducking the NHL's truth. Nor is he caving to its challenge. And why would he? Yzerman knows as well as anyone superstars can be mined deep within the draft. During his tenure as GM of the Lightning, the club selected Andrei Vasilevskiy 19th overall, Nikita Kucherov 58th overall and Brayden Point 79th overall. The best goalie in hockey, arguably the best winger, and I'd argue one of the top 10 centers.
It's true. Five of the NHL's top 10 scorers this season were former first overall picks and nine of them were taken in the top 10. Superstars live at the tippy-top of the draft. But the Maple Leafs found Mitch Marner at No. 4, the Jets found Mark Scheifele at No. 7 and the Avs found Mikko Rantanen at No. 10. (Of course, Marner and Rantanen both play on the wing of a fellow top-10 scorer and ... a former first overall pick!) And the Bruins found Brad Marchand at No. 71.
If there's a team beyond the Blues that offers the most hope for the Wings, it's probably Boston. The Bruins have assembled a perennial Cup contender with just one top-10 pick in the past 10 drafts, and that was long-gone Dougie Hamilton in 2011. They've sustained their success by finding superstars in addition to Marchand like David Pastrnak 25th overall in 2014 and Tuukka Rask 21st overall in 2005 and one of the best two-way centers of his generation Patrice Bergeron 45th overall in 2003.
(It also helped to have a hulk of a No. 1 defenseman for the entirety of the last decade. Zdeno Chara was drafted 56th overall, by the Islanders, in ... 1996! Cyborg.)
Maybe the Red Wings' next superstar is already in the system. Moritz Seider feels like the closest thing. Maybe they'll find him in this year's draft, and not necessarily with the sixth overall pick. As Yzerman pointed out Wednesday night, the squeeze in scouting brought on by the pandemic will likely cause a number of great players to slip through the cracks of the first few rounds.
"You’re going to wake up in three years and go, 'Wow, I had no idea this guy was going to be this good,'" Yzerman said.
On a smaller scale, it's beginning to feel like Seider slipped through the cracks of the first few picks in 2019. Great players are everywhere. So are superstars, if you knew where to look. That's the challenge facing Yzerman and the Wings, a challenge both the GM and the organization are poised to stare down.