Don't get excited for college free agent signings until you see at least one pro season. 95% of those guys never become more than depth players.

Exactly. It's rare they ever become anything of value. The best college UFA forward the last 20 years is Bozak and the best college defense UFA has been Schmidt. Super rare they become much of anything.

Pittsburgh has a good track record of attracting + developing NCAA players..
There also has been a lot of NCAA players to go on and have very successful careers, idk where you guys are A) getting those #'s + B) making those assumptions.

There are TONS of draftees who never see an NHL game.

Like we said, sure they become depth players, but rarely anything more. Go find a list of players that become top 6 forwards or top 3 defensemen. It's really rare. Even ZAR, who had freakn 63 points in 38 NCAA games his senior year has a total of 36 points in 116 NHL games. A scout once told me, if a guy isn't drafted it's usually for a reason. Of course there are always exceptions, but the chances a college free agent is more than a bottom 6 or bottom 3 D player are very very low.

The chances of most NHL draftees being more than a bottom 6 F or top 3D are also very low..? What's the difference

Undrafted players signed from college and have played 100 games.
Noel Acciari
Alex Iafallo
Drake Caggiula
Austin Czarnik
Carter Rowney
Daniel Carr
Garnet Hathaway
Evan Rodrigues
Conor Sheary
Brandon Tanev
Tim Schaller
Trevor van Riemsdyk
Taylor Fedun
Brian Gibbons
Luke Glendening
Chris Kunitz
Andy Greene
Ben Lovejoy
Jason Garrison
Nate Prosser
Stephen Gionta
Matt Read
Cory Conacher
Brad Hunt
Troy Stecher
Ryan Carpenter
Jordan Oesterle
Torey Krug
Danny DeKeyser
Andrej Šustr
Matt Tennyson
Nate Schmidt
Chad Ruhwedel
Neal Pionk
Frank Vatrano
Christian Folin
Jay Beagle
Tyler Bozak
J. T. Brown
Matt Irwin
Mark Letestu

From first glance I notice 6 Pens...
Thank you for doing the work I didn't want too!

False. A NHL drafted player has a muuuuuch better chance of being a top 6 or top 3 D player than an undrafted college player. It's not even close. Every NHL draft you can find dozens of those guys. 1 out of like 500 college free agents become anything.

Exactly. Very few on that last are top 6 or top 3 D players. I found Kunitz, Gionta, Schmidt, Krug, maybe Bozak and Iafallo. And this doesn't include the thousands of college players that haven't done jack squat over the last 20 years.

Well it was wikipedia they even color the active players green.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_undrafted_NHL_players_with_100_games_played