I am always suspicious of this sort of ranking. Drafting and ranking young players is always a crap shoot. Some will play above their estimated potential while others will play below that ranked potential. In the end, what is key is the ability to bring up one or two really good players each year. I think that the Ducks will be able to do this over the next several years.
What I dislike about them is they seem to project these teams to be poorly stocked for the future. The fact of the matter is we're plenty stocked for what we need except for the goaltending department. But even then we're set for the next 2-3 years on the big club anyway. Furthermore our top-6 of forwards includes three guys under the age of 23 and one under 30 all on long-term deals or still on Entry-level deals. We have a couple bottom-6 guys ready to go in Miller and Wirtanen, not too mention Carter who's already here. Plus Belesky, Tangradi, O'Dell and Deschamps in the near future. Festerling is being brought up this year and Mikkelson and/or Salcido will be here next year. Mitera and Gardiner should be here each year after that respectively.
I think what those rankings illustrate is teams with the most high-end talent in their prospect pool. But that doesn't mean the lower ranked teams don't have guys that won't be effective. On the contrary I think we are stocked very well with effective role players to go with our already young, dominant players on the team now.
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