Detroit's "skills" are a thing of legend on hf but they're completely random. If the Wings had ANY idea of what Pavel Datsyuk was going to be, they wouldn't have drafted 6 players with a combined 2 career NHL games before they drafted Datsyuk. Same with Zetterberg (3 guys, 32 games). They played the Cold War card well, spent a ton of money and we're seeing their slide back to mediocrity playing out the last couple years.
Adding extra picks never hurts -- Lessio, Gormley and Visintin picks were all acquired -- and the more kids you have, the better your chances of them panning out. I've never researched this, but it seems like a team that can regularly sign useful veteran forwards to short-term deals before flipping them at the deadline could gain a huge, long-term advantage. Players like Klesla, Fiddler, Gordon and Torres are exactly the sort of useful bottom-9 / bottom-4 players who teams look for, and to that point, if there's a deal to be made for Moss or Halpern (or Vrbata and Morris, if we fall back from playoff contention), that'd be a no-brainer to me in March.
The only question I have right now is GMDM's long-term vision. We all loved Ribeiro's signing at the time and most of us still do, but I can't think of a forward more dissimilar to Doan and Hanzal, and I wonder if that (and the hockey we've seen this year) suggests the Coyotes of 2012 are never coming back because that's not where GMDM wants the team to go. Having a clear, consistent blueprint from the NHL to your CHL scouts (and drafting and developing players who fit that blueprint) is a better way to ensure your picks pan out than applying the Detroit Special Sauce.
You only get the Crosbys and the Stamkoses by sucking (or by getting opportunistic like Dallas did with Seguin last summer and finding a stud who is in a bad situation), but there are more than enough players. The core young group of OEL, Yandle, Hanzal, Domi, Murphy and maybe Gormley stacks up just fine to the rest of the NHL from now until 2019 or so, as long as the team identity is solid and the right complimentary pieces are around them. You don't need lottery picks to get the complimentary pieces.